As impressive as “Maestro” – Bradley Cooper’s biographical film about Lawrence-born Leonard Bernstein – is, it makes a common mistake of taking someone famous for artistic achievements and dwelling instead upon their not nearly as interesting personal life.

Cooper’s film in which he plays the legendary Bernstein also leaves out, inexplicably, what could have been a fabulous sequence: the evening Bernstein and his actor-socialite wife Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan) threw a soiree for members of the Black Panther Party, an event immortalized by Thomas Wolfe in his scathingly hilarious 1970 “New York” magazine article “Radical Chic.” The essay was devastating. Cooper should have found a way to get it in.

Cooper’s film, produced by Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg no less and co-written by Cooper and Oscar winner Josh Singer (“Spotlight”), makes no bones about Leonard “Lenny” Bernstein being gay. On the morning of the day he was called upon to make his debut conducting the New York Philharmonic Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, we see the Harvard and Boston Latin School graduate in his skivvies, answering the phone and smoking (get ready for a lot more smoking), while his male lover lounges in bed. Apparently, Bruno Walter has come down with the flu. Would twenty-something Bernstein like to fill in for Walter? Yes, he would. His debut is brilliant. He is the new wunderkind.

What now? Well, first he meets Felicia. She “knows” about Lenny. They fall in love anyway, marry and have three children. He “needs” her. In addition to being a conductor, Lenny is a composer, a concert pianist and eventually a TV star. At parties he and Felicia attend on dates, people such as Betty Comden and Adolf Green play piano and sing. Lenny composes the music, working with Jerome “Jerry” Robbins and Stephen Sondheim on something called “West Side Story.” Hey, wasn’t that Aaron Copeland (Brian Klugman)? Would I have preferred to see how these artists worked together instead of hanging out with Lenny and another one of his crushes? Yes, I would.

As Felicia, Mulligan almost sings her dialogue in some undefinable accent (Montealegre was born in Costa Rica). Sometimes, she pipes like a piccolo. Dialogue overlaps.

Sarah Silverman delivers biting wit as Bernstein’s champagne-guzzling sister Shirley. Maya Hawke is full of longing as Lenny’s older daughter Jamie. In Tanglewood, Jamie needs a reassurance from her father that he is not a homosexual. He denies it, attributing the “rumors” to “jealousy.” In his youthful, controversial Bernstein make-up, Cooper resembles a satyr. Lenny composes the score for Elia Kazan’s “On the Waterfront,” or so we are told. Creating music is a kind of miracle. I would have liked to see Cooper try to capture that wizardry on camera. Music was Bernstein’s real life, wasn’t it? In one fraught scene, Felicia is in the wings, clad in a pair of arm-length white gloves, literally standing in Lenny’s shadow. Later, Lenny conducts Mahler’s 2nd Symphony in the Ely Cathedral in England, his skin a shade of mahogany. When Felicia gets ill, Lenny turns into a hero. Thanksgiving Parade Snoopy drifts past their windows, a giant ghost. Silver fox Lenny dances, clinging to a much younger partner, at a club. Is it Studio 54? Adieu, Lenny. Loved your music. Your life? Not so much.

(“Maestro” contains profanity and drug use)

“Maestro”

Rated R. At the Landmark Kendall Square. Grade: B-