Bradley Cooper picks out “one of the best films” ever made
With one Oscar-nominated feature under his belt as a director with 2018’s A Star is Born and the hotly anticipated Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro looking set to be another serious awards contender, it’s fair to say that the actor and director Bradley Cooper probably knows a thing or two about what makes a film great.
Even before he’d transitioned into the director role, Cooper had worked on some of the biggest films of the 2010s, with credits on Limitless, Silver Linings Playbook and American Sniper, to name just a few. His collaborations saw him work with the likes of Todd Phillips, David O. Russell and the legendary Clint Eastwood for the controversial but hugely successful American Sniper. And all of that after cinching a Master in Fine Arts from James Lipton’s prestigious drama academy, the Actor’s Studio.
With such extensive experience working in the film medium and such high exposure to both quality movies and filmmakers, Cooper’s credentials give the man a fair bit of authority. For someone so immersed in the world not just as a performer but as an active creative, it’s fascinating to see what sort of films he holds in high regard. As it turns out, there’s one film in particular that Cooper considered to be “one of the best”.
Speaking to Rotten Tomatoes while promoting the sci-fi thriller Limitless, Cooper was asked to name some of his favourite films. As per any genuine cinephile, his choices ranged from low-fi Danish family dramas under the ‘Dogme 95 ‘ banner to classic 1970s gems from Francis Ford Coppola. It was a more recent film, however, that took Cooper’s particular fancy: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly from 2007.
Based on the 1997 memoir by French journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby, the Oscar-nominated biopic told the story of Bauby in three distinct parts, each one using a heavily experimental format that played with the audience’s own sense of perspective. For Cooper, it was “just one of the best films ever made. The acting, the story, the conception visually.”
Nabbing director Julian Schnabel the ‘Best Director’ Award at Cannes, the film was a massive hit on the arthouse scene and is still widely considered one of the greatest films of the 21st century. Regarding Schnabel, Cooper stated that he was “just wonderful”. The director continued to make films; his most recent offering was 2018s At Eternity’s Gate, an equally strange and expressionistic biopic about the life of painter Vincent van Gogh, brilliantly portrayed by Willem Dafoe.
Having himself moved over into biopic territory with Maestro, the trailer seems to indicate that Cooper has been influenced by Schnabel’s approach, at least in some small way. Rather than a traditional biopic, it seems like the film following Bernstein will flit between decades, switching between black-and-white and saturated colour to denote key shifts in both era and story.
Watch the trailer for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly below.
