‘Bernstein’s Wall’ Review: A Bracing Documentary Captures How Leonard Bernstein Became the Superstar of American High Culture

. To understand the pedestal he strode upon, you’d have to go back to the period when classical music was still at the center of things . You’d have to go back to the era before, coming off “A Star Is Born,” couldn’t get the backing for a Bernstein biopic that would play in movie theaters. Within that now vanishing world, the conductor loomed like some elevated rock-star version of Merlin crossed with P.T. Barnum, a mystic who would lead us all to the mountaintop of classical ecstasy.

The whole idea of the conductor was one of the most riveting pieces of theater that Western art had ever come up with. His job, during a performance, was to lead the orchestra, to keep it perfectly timed and on track . His real job, though , was the drama that’s been parodied by everything from “Bugs Bunny” to Simon Hellberg’s luscious conductor monologue in Leos Carax’s “Annette”: his role of acting out the passion of the music for the audience.

What had happened? Back then, conductors were never that young, and the fact that Bernstein had that Jewish caboose of a last name had been considered, by some, to be a perilous disadvantage. At the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, Bernstein’s mentor and his lover, the 60ish Russian conductor Serge Koussevitzky , told Bernstein to change his name to “Burns.” But after a restless night of no sleep, he couldn’t bring himself to do it; he couldn’t not be himself.

Bernstein launched his career as a composer almost simultaneously to his rise as a conductor, and one flaw in “Bernstein’s Wall” is that the documentary takes his identity as a writer of musicals and ballets far too much for granted. The tale it tells of how “West Side Story” came into being is fascinating .

I can’t wait to see this!

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