Bernstein's Wall

I've seen it a bajillion times but there's few better Maestro Moments than when he's conducting the America recording

fran hoepfner

Director Douglas Tirola’s endlessly engaging documentary concerning composer Leonard Bernstein’s creative and humanist ethos glued my eyes to the screen and never let me go.

Robert Daniels

Review by Sean Boelman. Perhaps the most influential American composer in all of history, Leonard Bernstein lived an absolutely fascinating life and the documentary Bernstein’s Wall allows audiences to hear about it in his own words. It’s a bit traditional in how it’s…

disappointment media

Makes you respect Lenny not for his monstrous talent, though he clearly had talent to spare, but for his indefatigable love of the art of music and raging desire to share that love with as many people as possible. For all the archival gems collected here — tons of…

Eli

Really liked it. It has Bernstein himself act as the narrator (through archival recordings) of his own life, which I think is a small miracle of editing. It focused much more on his activism, politics, and philosophies than it did about his musical oeuvre (sorry, Candide…

James

Tickets and Showtimes DIRECTED BY DOUGLAS TIROLA The legendary maestro Leonard Bernstein—celebrity conductor, composer, and political activist—is thrillingly captured in this archival documentary portrait by Douglas Tirola (DRUNK STONED BRILLIANT DEAD). With Bernstein’s…

Film Forum

My favorite thing in a documentary is when, suddenly, the next piece of archival material is Haldeman and Nixon saying absolutely batshit stuff on oval office tapes.

David A.M. Wilensky

It's interesting to see Tirola swerve from a talking-head documentary to one made entirely of archive footage, and, indeed, this is a feat of editing. However, I couldn't help but feel frustrated by the spiraling stream of topics that make barely any sense in how they're…

Blankments

this was all riveting, but i adored how much attention was paid to how much bernstein loved to share and teach. the film captures his love for that and music so beautifully.

Sammie