I Want More for Bradley Cooper.

I may yet be proved wrong, but I watched the trailer for “Maestro” with a modest sense of exhilaration, the kind that is niether hot nor cold but intrigued, mostly due to the fact that it was Bradley Cooper's latest. I like Bradley Cooper, have since I first saw him on screen. He's funny in a way that isn't built into a need to prove he's more than a pretty face, nor a way that is meant to hide his insecurities. He has a well of vulnerability that I think can present itself in ways that repel you or invite you to give him a big warm hug. I expected, initially to come out of the Maestro trailer anticipating it's release with a fervor backed up by the strong debut of “A Star is Born” and instead came out reminded of how underwhelmed I've been with Cooper's post- Hangover career. I would not presume to be able to offer anything approaching a salient or sharp commentary on Jewish identity and/or the teetering balancing act of cultural appropriation as it pertains to that identity and more specifically the ethical issues around the use of a prosthetic nose to play a Jewish character or real life person. My interest (or in this case disinterest) in Cooper's role is far less political and far more simplistic; I don't find it to be an interesting choice for Cooper and I think it represents as of late a pattern as it pertains to his choices. More to the point his choices since transitioning to the sphere of “prestige” actor and that by comparison Jake Gyllenhaal who’s had a somewhat similar career path and was also interested in the story behind Maestro is far more intriguing for it.

My intro to Cooper was in 2005’s “Wedding Crashers” as the petulant hair trigger boyfriend of Rachel McAdams’s Claire Cleary. Cooper was painfully on the mark as “Sack Lodge”, the kind of man stunted by an idea of manhood that never grew past what he saw it as in sixth grade. His portrayal was so accurate and yet so absurd it nestled itself in the sweet spot of being as repulsive and hard to watch as it was magnetic and attractive. Cooper would flounder around flashing his particular kind of brilliance in similar roles and movies of varying quality until 2012 when he hit a two run double with David O’ Russell’s “The Silver Linings Playbook” and Derek Cianfrance’s “The Place Beyond the Pines”. While I'm indifferent to the former; a rudderless non impactful sludge of ideas that aren't communicated very well, the latter was a revelation of a film and a sound awakening to the other possibilities for Cooper's distinctive charms. As Avery Cross in “The Place Beyond the Pines”, Cooper inverted and turned on its head the qualities he tried so hard to manufacture in Silver Linings and other Hangover wannabes (A-Team is great though!) and latched onto something that was as disagreeable and disdainful as he was in The Wedding Crashers in ways that movie was too ridiculous to take to the house. In the Wedding Crashers, Silver Linings, and The Place, Cooper is playing immature men who for one reason or the other haven't grown up, but in Crashers he is diving head first into being disreputable, in Silver Linings he teeters from likeable and unlikeable and doesn't really find a great balance in either, and in The Place he is as close to on the money as it gets. There was a similar boyish quality in “Sack Lodge” as “Avery Cross”, a similar unease with who he was, but it was far more vulnerable, and much more voluminous than that of Sack Lodge. It gave Cooper thereto unprecedented amounts of empathy and sympathy. Depth he hadn't mined and we hadn't seen until that very moment, verisimilitude that I didn't think he was capable of, and from that point on it seemed Cooper was in a different space in Hollywood.

Cooper’s filmography from that point reads like a who's who of Oscar mainstays, he has worked with David O’Russell several times, as well as Clint Eastwood, (twice) Guillermo Del Toro, Dan Trachtenberg, Thee Paul Thomas Anderson, and is now on his second prestige project directed by and starring himself. Jake Gyllenhaal had a similar career trajectory in that it was very herky-jerky to start. Hollywood did not seem to know what to do with him. One day he was in “The Day after Tomorrow” the next he was in “Brokeback Mountain”, one “Zodiac” the next “Prince of Persia”. The difference in these movies is actually to be admired (except Prince of Persia…like ..why?) but they were flopping, and as a consequence Gyllenhaal despite showing the same skills we all see today, had not found his stride, I don't even know that he had found land yet. Land and a stride would arrive, starting with David Ayers “End of Watch”. I found Ayer’s movie to be a dutifully proud evocation of mediocrity in whole, and pure copaganda but Gyllenhaal was absolutely brilliant in it as was his scene partner Michael Pena. From that point Gyllenhaal began an unprecedented record of escape tricks from any sense of patterned thinking around what movies he's going to do, while simultaneously only increasing his value as an actor in that realm of Hollywood that some might call the “A list”. Gyllenhaal’s type of director is as elusive as his type of movie and it shows. He has worked with Denis Villeneuve (twice) Antoine Fuqua (twice) Tom Ford, Daniel Espinoza, Bong Joon-ho, Jacques Audiard, Michael Bay and Guy Ritchie. Coopers filmography for all its stature, elicits no such sense of wonder, intrigue or quality. I am bored, watching the trailer from Maestro elicited not one tiny infinitesimal particle of interest from my body, and if anything I might have yawned without knowing it.

What “An American Sniper”, “Burnt” “Joy”, “The Mule”, “A Star is Born”, and now “Maestro” represent to me is yearning, a not so hidden desire to be seen as worthy of respect from a certain type of peer. It’s a damned good career, but not a particularly interesting, or arresting one. In my experience with people and I mean that anecdotally -this is not some universal truth I have found - in the people most often given to looking for what's for them, the choices appear more erratic than those who are looking for a type. Jake Gyllenhaal is picking roles by what's for him in a way that I think is true to what Jake Gyllenhaal likes and desires to see himself in and it shows in the variety of his work. Bradley Cooper on the other hand seems to be sticking with the idea of what someone who has now achieved the status he recently achieved is supposed to do. For most of us that may have watched Helen Mirren's long and illustrious career we would not assume (and nor would Hollywood) that she would want to do a Fast and Furious movie - I mean why shouldn't she? - but it wouldn't be something that us or Hollywood in general would see for her, yet she did want to do it and for no other reason but to have a good time, something she admitted on The Graham Norton Show. Bradley Cooper has movie star idol looks, and a healthy dose of frat boy machismo, but there's also something a little dangerous, something a little dead behind the eyes and his most interesting projects right along with his best work have been those which explored where the roads of those traits lead a lot more. Those sensibilities and quirks which flipped that movie star idol-ness to show the idleness, the listlessness around evolution or vulnerability. If he didn't go for the obvious I think Cooper could play a good Android, or strange life form via Scarlett Johansen in “Under the Skin”. He has some of that sense of crossed wiring as if he was growing human, rather than already one, and there's a childlike quality to Cooper that belies a kind of innocence and newness to experience that would serve him well in this kind of role. By no means has Cooper had a bad career, I just haven't found it very fascinating. By comparison Gyllenhaal has been the exact opposite. Gyllenhaal’s career has been one of frantic movement and absorption with a string of unique choices that have ended up in an extremely high dosage of quality as well as memorable performances. “Donnie Darko”, “Bubble Boy”, “Night Crawler”, “Okja”, “Enemy”, “Prisoners”, and “Ambulance” show a varied willingness to play with both the straight and the crooked, menacing and innocent, beautiful and ugly. I just don't find Bradley Cooper's career to be anywhere near as littered with those type of performances. I thought he was very appropriately good in “A Star is Born”, but I could think of several other actors who could have done it either just as good or better, and the role is literally one that has been done time and time again with far more interesting choices in how to bring that character to life, never mind that he was out acted by just about everybody in that movie especially Sam Elliott and Lady Gaga. What I see in “Maestro” and his playing Bernstein is just another calculated aim for prestige as is his choice to direct it. I'm not saying that he doesn't bear some deep fondness for Bernstein, I'm not saying there isn't something else that drew him there, but I am saying, I want more for Bradley Cooper. I want something that actually shakes me up, I want choices that feel as distinctive as his tan in A-Team. I want him to do the type of films that bring out the magma, the quartz, the crystallized marrow of Cooper's soul in the same way that Anthony Mann would bring out the dark blue side of Jimmy Stewart. In the way that “One-Hour Photo” and “Insomnia” allowed Robin Williams to show us the things that pained him on the inside, to show us that live wire act was always teetering on sadness and melancholy. I am saying I find what Ive seen to date to be dreadfully ho-hum and respectable and I find that almost, almost as fundamentally impoverished as I do the identity aspect of it for what of that he bears responsibility for.