What's the AFI Project, you ask? For more information, or if you just enjoy my bemused ramblings, read here: http://www.spout.com/blogs/pippin06/archive/2008/3/1/25756.aspx
Amadeus is on the following AFI list:
The Original Top 100 (#53)
Greetings, ladies and gentlemen of Spoutland! Long time no blog. I blame this on my other great cultural love, theater. It is super difficult to watch films while, in this case, stage managing a little musical called Guys and Dolls at a local community theater for six days out of a week. As such, not only have I not been able to see many films (and thereby review them), I nearly forgot that I re-watched this little gem from the 80s a month ago, a film that curiously made the original AFI Greatest list but failed to register on any of the subsequent lists.
I first saw Amadeus when I was in the eighth grade. For some reason, my English teacher - who never really felt any sort of pressure to make her students actually do work - showed us this film. At the time, I didn't really like it. My impression of the film at the tender age of 13 was that it was weird and offensively unsympathetic to one of the world's most renowned and celebrated composers, and that made me mad. As a budding violinist just discovering an appreciation for classical music by the widely acknowledged "greats," I didn't appreciate the fact that the ingenious Mozart and his image were being sullied by this movie. Plus, the movie reminded me of the marginally related Falco song "Rock Me, Amadeus," which was an annoying synth-pop one-hit wonder from the same decade. I do not like that song even still. It's annoying, I tell you!
Re-watching the film for this project, I've revised my opinion somewhat. I'm not sure that it is deserving of being called one of America's greatest films, but it's certainly a much better film than I initially gave it credit for. One of its most winning qualities is the fact that the filmmakers, particularly Director Milos Forman (who also directed One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), definitely knew and appreciated music and painted the film in such a wash that this knowledge and passion for music permeates each and every frame. Plus, the film boasts one of the greatest musical scores of film - incorporating both composers Mozart and Salieri's works at intermittent intervals to the delight of music lovers' ears, including mine.
The film is told from Salieri's (F. Murray Abraham) perspective as he rots away in his advanced age in an insane asylum. Under the guise of confession to a local priest, Salieri recalls his life from the moment he was introduced to prodigal but boorish Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Tom Hulce) and the ensuing, unstated rivalry that developed between them. Salieri, after all, rued Mozart's genius and instant success; the famed Mozart lacked proper social graces and humility, after all, whilst Salieri spent many days genuflecting before God and questioning why Mozart was blessed with talent when he, himself, worked so hard, only to be overshadowed by his younger counterpart in places such as the court of Austrian Emperor Joseph II (Jeffrey Jones). Thus, Salieri works to sabotage the young Mozart, disguising himself as a benefactor, commissioning the composition of a "Requiem" that costs Mozart everything, even as the prodigy's drinking and other appetites consume him first.
Amadeus is a curious film to me. On the one hand, the grandiose and operatic story meditating on how life imitates art and vice versa, is something rarely equaled in cinema. It's a true story at its core, but it's based on bits of urban legend derived from the relative lack of information available about this particular relationship. The film is opulent, with extravagant art direction and costuming reflecting its eighteenth century period. F. Murray Abraham's performance is tour de force - over the top but in a way so genuine and so relatable that its melodrama is forgiven. Every opera, every performance of either composer's works was performed and filmed with great care. This is truly a classical music lover's film, from the very opening frames to the last.
I don't love this film, though, and it comes down to some of the choices taken by the filmmakers. I read that it was conscious on Forman's part to direct the performers to use their native accents, most of which were American and inconsistently so. As such, nobody sounded like anyone else, even though all were supposed to be Austrian, and I found this lack of consistency extremely distracting to my suspension of disbelief. The quirky laugh aside, I was never convinced by Hulce's portrayal of the titular man - even if Mozart was a man-child incapable of propriety, enabled though he was according to his genius, Hulce just seemed like the wrong choice for the part. He certainly played up the emotionally underdeveloped sides of Mozart and provided great contrast to Abraham's stalwart and sour Salieri, but there was a quality about Hulce's performance that unsettled me, though I can't put my finger on or give a name to this quality. Maybe it's the notion that I could never buy him as the genius, even if it wasn't hard to buy him as the garish and arrogant young boor who possessed the genius. While the film lauded Mozart's unparalleled body of work even as it convincingly portrayed him to be the court jester, every time Hulce floated onto screen in scenes where Mozart was composing or showing off his prodigy, I had trouble believing his characterizations. I could be the minority in this reaction, but I can't help these reactions just the same.
The All Movie Guide review at the bottom of this page discusses how thoroughly the film explores paradox – the paradox of Mozart the man, the paradox of Salieri's love-hate obsession with him. True, the film walks a fine tightrope of balancing contradictions in an intellectually satisfying way. As entertainment, though, I didn't love this film as much others because I was too annoyed or distracted with the aforementioned elements. I will say this for Amadeus: though it clocks in at just about three hours, it never drags. Forman, who seems to be a contemplative director adept at parsing out emotional resonance and philosophical undercurrent from his unusual topics, ingeniously conducted the pace of the film not unlike the movements in an opera. In fact, the entire movie seemed to ebb and flow – crescendo and decrescendo, if you will – to the passion and genius of the composers behind the music, and this fact leaves me liking the movie quite a bit, even if I can't love it.
Is it one of America's greatest films? That is the big question. I'm not so sure, but I leave others to ponder and to answer it. Incidentally, The Deer Hunter replaced Amadeus at this rank on the Revised list (The Deer Hunter jumped up several spots from its original rank). For my money, Amadeus has aspects of greatness but is a film I would not place on my personal 100 greatest.
Still, the film is very good. In fact, I'm inclined to rate it a 7.5 between shaky/entertaining and minor flaws/very good on the patented ratings scale, owing to the few distracting flaws I discussed above (even if they are flaws in my eyes only). As to the test, I don't think it passes. I'm glad I watched it again, but I think twice is enough for me. The best part about Amadeus in my opinion is the music and the celebration of musical genius, and that's something I can appreciate and enjoy without having to watch the movie again and at any time I wish.