Running Home --- Day 12/329

Walk/Run: Opera Plaza Cinema (Maestro)

Distance: 3.5 miles

Carey Mulligan and Bradley Cooper in Maestro

So Ciwt is sitting here thinking she is glad she isn't a film critic.  If she were, her professionalism would insist that she spend time analyzing Maestro looking for its good points and flaws so she could properly inform her readers.

But since she is not, she can savor the movie wholecloth.  For her it was perfect as is.  A superior fine art statement propelled from beginning to end by full blown, passionate and beautiful energy.  Both - passion and beauty - in all their forms: good, enchanting, heartfilled, heart breaking, kind, cruel.  And, above all, Musical.

Ciwt was so caught up in that life energy that she found herself running all the way home when it was over.

Bradley Cooper comes as close as possible to recreating the vortex of enigmatic, near manic, driven life force that was the musical genius Leonard Bernstein.  Carey Mulligan is brilliant as his light as air, bone deep sensitive, supremely disciplined actress wife Felicia Montealegre.  And Maestro opens its  and the audience's heart to the wildly complex, tumultuous, and deeply loving marriage they created for 27 years.

It is inconceivable to Ciwt that Cooper and his movie won't be nominated for multiple awards: Best Actor, Director, Original Screenplay, Musical Score, Cinematography, Make Up, Costumes and maybe more.  It isn't a category, but he and/or his casting agent deserve an award for once again placing a first class talent in the role of his female co-star.  Carey Mulligan is every bit as excellent as Lady Gaga who won an Oscar nomination and Oscar for her role in Cooper's A Star is Born.  

Now having caught her breath from that run home, Ciwt is off to read what the professional film critics have to say about Maestro.  Maybe/Probably it was too arty for some; not Ciwt.