The difference between two stories we've seen before

I was looking forward to seeing Maestro, Bradley Cooper's latest film about the life of Leonard Bernstein. Larissa objected, thinking that she would find it too slow, as there's a lot to talk about in Bernstein's complicated life. Then we found out that it was a Netflix production, so we can watch it whenever, so that problem was solved. But we had already decided to see Fallen Leaves instead. The latter is a Finnish production about two average people leading fairly downtrodden lives who discover each other by chance and try to make contact, but keep stumbling over themselves, their lives, and other obstacles. It's a very simple story but it's effectively told and fairly entertaining. Indeed, it was done so well that it won the Jury Prize at Cannes this year, proving yet again that stories don't have to be complex, as long as they're well-written and well-acted and aren't predictable Hollywood boilerplate.

Ansa (Alms Pöysti), a grocery store worker and Holappa (Jussi Vatanen), a metal reclaimer, meet up at a bar on karaoke night, having been dragged there by their respective friends, Liisa (Nuppu Koivu) and Huotari (Janne Hyytiäinen.) There's a brief spark between them that they kind of grudgingly acknowledge and then make plans to meet again to see if it becomes a fire. Unfortunately, Holappa is a functioning alcoholic and Ansa isn't the surest person in social situations, so they end up missing each other in a variety of ways (mostly caused by Holappa.) The story doesn't get any more complicated than that, aside from the brief looks into Liisa and Huotari's perspective on life and relationships and the difficulties that our two leads have in remaining employed. It's basically a story about modern life and middle age. Of course, life in Helsinki is probably much different than it is in modern America, so there's not a lot of interaction with phones or the Interwebs or any of the other things that might suffuse wealthier societies and the process of people trying to hook up (My knowledge of modern Finnish culture and society is admittedly quite limited.) But the story doesn't really need all of that, either, since most of it is just an examination of how Ansa and Holappa are looking at life and whether they're willing to trust what it and each other are telling them.

There's a bit of a Coen Brothers air to the production overall, especially when it involves Huotari, who is easily the funniest character of the cast, as he tries to convince women, in general, and then Liisa in specific that, despite his gray hair, he's not actually that old and anyone who suggests that he is must be trying to pull a con. It's like Republican projection but far less sinister and far more amusing. But there's also some of the plaintiveness and resigned attitude that often pervades Coen stories, alongside the determination and willingness to keep forging ahead that is also a frequent feature of their characters. It also doesn't finish with a pat ending but leaves it open to question as to whether the relationship we've been trying to see established for the 81 minute runtime will actually be a positive one. That uncertainty, like everything else about this film, is just like life and can easily be understood and absorbed by an audience willing to see real people do real things.

That is, of course, a contrast to Maestro, which I started to watch last night. This is just the latest version of La La Land; a movie by Hollywood and for Hollywood that is solely concerned with Hollywood and the little tragedies within it that are only really relatable to those inhabiting it. In this case, the New York City musical scene stands in for Tinseltown. In the same way Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone tried to convey the horrible struggle of being an aspiring actor, Maestro takes us one step further and tries to convey the incredible anguish of being an enormously successful composer and conductor. Admittedly, Bernstein's life was more complicated by being a gay male in a period when such a thing, even among creative types, was far less acceptable than it is now and I think this is the angle that most occupied the thoughts of writer/director/star, Bradley Cooper. But the first hour of it plays out as a brief survey of how difficult Bernstein's life was on an emotional level when on every other conceivable level it clearly was not. This was not an aberrant personality like Oppenheimer trying to relate to the people around him. This was the extraordinarily popular and, again, successful Lenny Bernstein enjoying life with both his beard and the men he had on the side.

In contrast to Fallen Leaves, this film doesn't seem like life. It feels like a Hollywood depiction of life that few in the audience would ever be able to relate to. If the first hour had spent more time on the wider scope of Bernstein's life, instead of long shots on the faces of his male lovers feeling rejected when he marries Felicia Montealegre Cohn (Carey Mulligan), I might not have gotten so bored and disappointed that I turned it off. In some respects, that's a bit of improvement, since I could only make it through 15 minutes of La La Land before leaving the room. Obviously, there are a lot of ways to look at the lengthy life of an extraordinarily talented figure who had an enormous impact on 20th century music and continues to do so today (West Side Story was just remade by someone as notable as Steven Spielberg, as just one example.) But Cooper decided to take the overwrought approach that doesn't really explore the length and breadth of that impact, but instead decides to bring it all down to the emotional angle that plays up how trying Bernstein's personal life was. In a way, it's kind of like a very removed version of Fallen Leaves, but it simply has no way to make the personal connection that the latter film does because it's too preoccupied with the sense of its own tragedy. As someone who has tried to produce creative works for my entire life, I can tell you that I'd have given a lot for my life to have turned out as tragic as Bernstein's. (Obviously, I would've had to have had even a minor fraction of his talent.)

Maybe I'm wrong about the overall film, since I only made it through the first half, but I'm not sure that I'm willing to sacrifice the other hour of my far less interesting life to find out whether Cooper's vision changes. I'd rather see stuff about more relatable people. It's not that Bernstein wasn't presented as human, which is my frequent complaint about characters. He most certainly was. It's just that what he experienced is relatable to so few other humans that the message seems lost in its own attempted majesty. That's the difference between stories, even ones that we've seen a thousand times in various forms, that try to talk about life and those that imagine that their very removed life is somehow normal for the rest of us.