Bernstein Remains Out of Film’s Reach

Christa Ludwig, the lustrous Austrian soprano, sang with Karl Boehm and learned about strict rhythm. She sang with Herbert von Karajan and learned beautiful phrasing. But for Leonard Bernstein such accomplishments were just a start. “He opened my eyes; he opened my heart; he opened my soul,” she says in “Leonard Bernstein: Reaching for the Note,” a new documentary to be shown Tuesday afternoon as part of the AFI Film Festival and on KCET-TV Wednesday at 9 p.m. But she can’t say exactly what it is he did.

Nor, really, can this latest addition to PBS’ “American Masters” series, hard though it tries. Luckily, Susan Lacy, its director, writer and producer, has Lenny himself to work with.

I’m told that at a recent screening of the documentary, hard-boiled film critics wept at the end, and I can believe it. After two hours of clips of Bernstein showcasing an extraordinary life force that neither Ludwig nor anyone else can define in a sound bite, we’re bound to cry as the camera pans in closer and closer to a photograph of Bernstein’s face at the end. Just a few moments earlier, we had seen him a young, handsome god. Now, craggy, old, deep in profound thought and suffering, he looks the Old Testament prophet. The music is the transcendent ending of “West Side Story.” “Somewhere” floats off in a Wagnerian cadence. Who wouldn’t fall for that?

Typical of so many TV biographies, this documentary takes a highly conventional approach to a wildly unconventional man. It begins with the maudlin: Bernstein’s funeral cortege from Manhattan to Brooklyn, the funeral march from Beethoven’s “Eroica” on the soundtrack, and stories of hard-hats waving New York’s beloved maestro goodbye.

Then, the life. A difficult father who wants his son to enter his beauty supply business, but a phenomenal talent that cannot, will not, be repressed.

The great moments of a great career follow. The 25-year-old conductor’s famous last-minute substitution for Bruno Walter one Sunday afternoon in Carnegie Hall that garnered a front-page New York Times review and instant fame. His simultaneous triumph of “West Side Story” on Broadway and appointment as music director of the New York Philharmonic in 1957. The legendary 1968 performance of Mahler’s Second Symphony with the Israel Philharmonic on top of Mt. Scopus, to commemorate the uniting of Jerusalem at the end of the Six-Day War.

An effort is made to explore all aspects of Bernstein the protean musician--composer, conductor, educator--as well as the man. He is seen conflicted about his music (his flair for performance and for writing showy scores versus his inner need to make great, meaningful, spiritual statements). He is sexually conflicted as well, torn between family and gay life.

There are lots of sound bites from lots of the right talking heads: Stephen Sondheim, Andre Previn, Jerome Robbins, Bernstein’s children and brother among others offer anecdotes and explanations.

Occasionally something very telling is said. Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas catches Bernstein’s spirit best, describing his white-hot vision as the continuation of a tradition of ecstatic music-making. It was his searching, confessional style, the immutable need for communication, Tilson Thomas tells us, that many interpreted as a lack of taste. And, in the best line of the film, Tilson Thomas sums up Bernstein’s opera, “A Quiet Place” (and in many ways Bernstein himself), by calling it “the hopes of an insomniac” for peace.

We come away, though, persuaded mainly by watching and listening to Bernstein and hearing in others’ voices how much he meant to them. He was the first musician to understand the power of television, and even now, even in careless hands, he soars.

That is what makes this documentary lucky. With such material, it can’t fail. But that is also what is so untrue to Bernstein’s spirit. He could and often did fail, and when he did, say the flop of the musical “1600 Pennsylvania Ave.,” it was spectacular. Searchers don’t take the easy routes.

Lacy, though, does. She doesn’t care, for instance, if the soundtrack music corresponds to the pictures, as long as it can express the emotion she hopes to produce. Late in his career, Bernstein developed a near shamanistic ability to sustain a long musical line through pulse-stopping slow tempos, yet Lacy rarely lets people or music finish their thoughts. She has some rare material, especially from home movies, but surprisingly she still relies on many of the exact same clips found in an earlier documentary, “The Gift of Music.”

They are good clips and the film is compulsively watchable. But the opening of eyes, heart and soul that was Bernstein’s gift is an epic journey far beyond the scope of this pat overview.

* “Leonard Bernstein: Reaching for the Note” shows Tuesday, 4 p.m., at the Monica 4-Plex, 1332 2nd St., Santa Monica, and Wednesday at 9 p.m. KCET-TV.