KINDNESS AND ART

It's not often that kindness is associated with art. More often than not, the artist is historically a fickle being riddled by angst, sometimes mad, quirky at best, cruel at worst. The artist is to be forgiven. She or he is after all toeing the line of super-humanity, stretching her or his limits for the sake of art.

In a pivotal scene in Maestro, the stunning recent film by Bradley Cooper in which he plays Leonard Bernstein, and Carey Mulligan, his wife Felicia Montealegre, Bernstein's wife imparts one word to her children, her most important legacy, as she lays dying of cancer. "Kindness, kindness, kindness," she repeats, as if that is all that matters in life and death. It is a deeply touching and telling moment.

Maestro is about the complicated relationship between Bernstein, who was bisexual if not homosexual, and the conflicts this generated in his marriage to Montealegre, a Costa Rican actress who performed on Broadway, bore Bernstein three children, and endured her husband's infidelities for years.

Even when privy to dark secrets in a marriage, we cannot judge it, but what is clear in the film, which, according to the real life children of Bernstein and Montealegre, truthfully and authentically depicts who their parents really were, is that perhaps the only way to go forward in a troubled union of any sort, to get through life's struggles in general, is to forgive, tolerate, show kindness.

Mulligan's touching performance, grounded in her ability to demonstrate how Montealegre turned her confusion, angst and feelings of rejection into care and love, is what elevates Maestro from mere biopic to work of art. Her kindness is both the key to her character and the film's vitality and reach. 

Considering the state of the world, who could argue that kindness has never been more needed or important. Perhaps this is also true for art. Without witnessing explorations of that virtue, which can unravel our finest humanity and makes it possible even for adversaries to show their best selves in creations of art, how can we come away with anything remotely elevating? What is the role of art if not to recall us to our essential goodness while providing a unique anchor for our very survival.

In 1978 American novelist John Gardner published his book of essays, On Moral Fiction, in which he argued that art must have morality and beauty and test our values. Although contemporary art, cinema and literature, do not engage such goals as primary now, perhaps such aims should be revisited, especially in a historical moment in which the absence of virtue in life as well as art has left the world virtually bereft and floundering.

Does art reflect the times, or should it pave the way for us? Shouldn't art require of artists that we be more than our most intelligent, original and critical selves in the creative process, that we strive also to bring forth what is best in us and what we endeavor to depict of life--not only to keep humanity alive, but to re-invigorate its template.