'Bernstein's Wall': An Engrossing Dive Into The Famous Composer's Political Activism [Tribeca Review]

Using Leonard Bernstein’s own voice, collected from his myriad interviews throughout his life, as well as personal letters, many of which were published in the 2013 book “The Leonard Bernstein Letters,” Douglas Tirola’s “Bernstein’s Wall” works as both a broad overview of the famous conductor’s life, as well as a deep dive into his political activism. Framed around Bernstein’s famous 1989 “Ode to Freedom” concert that coincided with the Fall of Berlin Wall – and saw Bernstein change Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” to reflect the word “Freedom” – Tirola’s documentary allows Bernstein to create a political bildungsroman, as he talks through his entangled interests of artistic creation and social change. While impossible to fully explicate Bernstein’s contribution to musical composition and conductorship within the scope of a single film, “Bernstein’s Wall” wisely fixates on how Bernstein argued for political artistry, leveraging his celebrity to call attention to issues – Vietnam, Homophobia, Racism, the Carceral system, etc. – intertwining classical composition with radical reform. In all, “Bernstein’s Wall” demystifies Bernstein’s artistry with the type of clarity that the conductor often utilized to explain composition.

Seamlessly moving through various interviews with Bernstein, in which he recalls his early childhood in Boston, MA to his conductorship for the New York Philharmonic, Tirola overlays archival footage of Bernstein to showcase his almost meteoric rise within the field of composing. Bernstein recounts his early career at Harvard, the Curtis Institute of Music, and finally the inaugural year of Tanglewood, as he moves through the ranks, before settling in New York, if only because of its centrality to world-renowned orchestras. Unlike other conductors at the time, however, Bernstein doesn’t portray himself as a classicist, openly experimenting with multiple genres of music. His collaborations with Jerome Robbins – “On the Town” and “West Side Story” – showcase an almost preternatural gift at popular composition.

Frequently interrupting Bernstein’s own narration, Tirola excerpts various letters that he wrote, often to the composer Aaron Copland and his Felicia. His homosexuality is laid bare in these letters, as he struggles to contend with his desires against the backdrop of society and profession that preached heteronormativity. His letters to Copland, in particular, showcase a tangled mentor/mentee relationship with a sexualized component. Further, his letters to Felicia reveal a complicated marriage in which Felicia knew about his homosexuality. If these letters aren’t exactly new information, Tirola still contextualizes them within the scope of Bernstein’s other political acts.

As becomes increasingly clear, Bernstein saw the role of an artist as inherently political, as he recounts how he pushed against ingrained positions of the times – particularly through his composition, with Stephen Sondheim, of “America” from “West Side Story.” Added to these artistic endeavors, we see Bernstein’s alongside Harry Belafonte and Nat King Cole at JFK’s inauguration, which Berstein contends was a watershed moment in his political awakening. From there, “Bernstein’s Wall” moves through what amounts to a greatest hits of his advocacy, including his (in)famous gathering of Black Panthers inside his household, which gave birth to Tom Wolfe’s term “radical chic,” a pejorative phrase that Bernstein fiercely pushed back against.

As Bernstein grows in stature and age, he admits to becoming more politically transparent in his work, staging the hybridized concert MASS, created in reaction to the Vietnam War, as well as the Broadway flop “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” which attempted to recontextualize the early occupants of the White House through their relationship to race relations. Fascinatingly, Tirola intercuts excerpts from Nixon’s White House tapes to show just how much Bernstein got under his skin, as the president and his advisors are heard discussing a negative New York Times review, of all things.

By the time Bernstein shows up in Berlin, his status as a composer and a progressive activist is solidified. That concert isn’t given as much attention as the film’s title might suggest; it nevertheless crystalizes the way that Bernstein constructed his own self-identity, patiently explaining to the masses how classical composition – and by extension, all artistry – is political in nature. Tirola’s film is a sustained and streamlined dive into someone who, despite his ostentatious profession, distilled classical music down to its political roots and, in the process, became a household name. [A-]

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