Joseph Beck

One of the most incredible movies I have seen in a long time. The scenes are almost Chekovian in style - chock-full of subtext and nuance. The actors do an amazing job of painting a tragic picture of a lifelong partnership filled with love, but also sadness and disappointment. The Jerome Robbins ballet stylizes the young couple’s initial rush of frenetic success, seamlessly transcending from the realism of the scene of Bernstein reviewing a ballet rehearsal into a metaphor born of the very style he was midwifing. The cinematography is gorgeous - the transitions from scene to scene are theatrical and elegant, shifting in place and time with the change of an angle. The dialogue has an energy to it that is hard to quantify - it’s like watching Shakespeare and having to get used to hearing the actors speak in verse, but after twenty minutes, your brain adjusts and it sounds natural. If you are at all interested in the mid-century journey in the United States, you need to see this movie.