My grandfather was a friend of Lenny's and I met him several times, so I knew this movie would hold particular emotional resonance to me and looked forward to it more than any film this year. Personally, I would have preferred to see a little more focus on his work (rather than have "and you wrote West Side Story" dropped in during an interview), but I recognize that would have been a different movie; this was clearly telling the story of his relationship with Felicia, and at that it succeeded. There's some intentional emotional distancing of the audience in key scenes, I caught a couple of continuity errors in the editing, and I missed some dialogue (not sure if it was the sound mixing or just the Egyptian Theater where I saw it), but for the most part I thought this was brilliant, and the two lead performances are as good as you will ever see. Carey Mulligan is wonderful as always, and I would love to see her take home an Oscar for what is probably her best work to date. As for Cooper, I don't think I've ever seen a more spot-on filmed impersonation of a real-life figure. Not just the makeup, which is perfection (including the nose), but the voice, the mannerisms, the speech patterns, the facial expressions, and most stunningly (and challenging) of all, the conducting. There were many moments when I felt I was watching archival footage in a documentary. And the six minutes of Cooper inhabiting Lenny conducting Mahler's Second at Ely Cathedral is without a doubt the most thrilling scene I've seen in any movie this year.
