I should have known that meeting up with Shii means watching more films…

Amadeus

It’s not like I’m complaining though ;) Let me tell you a bit about my background of watching this film first: For ages, Shii has been telling me that I should watch this film and since Prog likes it as well, I felt I definitely should do so myself. However, I never came around to watch it until now that we have watched it together. Funnily, while watching it, I realized that I have seen it before. Many of its scenes looked very familiar to me, mostly the It was so much fun to pretend not to like it, making Shii to rave about its greatness even more, hahaha. Fact is, I do. Even though the film did not have a great ending, even though we watched the long director’s cut, even though it has many aspects of a clichéd Hollywood film (Wolfy! Stanzy!), I have liked it a lot. And here is why:

More than anything, I think that Amadeus is a lot like “Ed Wood” and “La Belle Noiseuse”, both films that are considered somewhat boring and are centered around something else than the story. In the case of “Ed Wood”, it’s the biography of an extraordinary man (not in the sense of greatness, but in the sense of uniqueness). The film serves this amazing life and brings it out in a splendid way – Amadeus also portrays a very lively, albeit historically unreal story Mozart’s and Salieri’s life. Even though I find the way Salieri describes Mozart’s music somewhat silly (as I don’t see Mozart’s music as that emotional and great), I have appreciated greatly how the nature of Mozart’s music was woven into the story. To me, the long opera scenes in the film were just like the long drawing procedure in “La Belle Noiseuse” – it’s centered around the art and music, not the story or the film itself. The film made me want to see Mozart’s operas (I have only seen the Serail and the Magic Flute until today).
The only thing I will never understand is the english singing. I love you, Shakespeare, but english in an opera that was originally concipated for another language (especially when translated from italian) just makes me want to die. English is the language of pop music and nu metal, but not for operas.
What we enjoyed about the film a lot were also the comedic elements, adorably presented by the actors – hahahahaha. Right?

Another thing I find a little sad, but expected, is the portrait of Constanze as a loving and worrying, but also somewhat stupid wife. Not only is this a cliché, but it’s probably untrue on most accounts. Oh well. Compared to that, I don’t mind Salieri’s bad image all that much, since I expect most people to know that he probably didn’t hate Mozart as much as the movie suggests. I actually also think that the movie made Salieri more famous in the world too. It wouldn’t surprise me if many people knew his name without ever having heard any of his music.

Mozart’s biography is the only composer’s I have actually known from when I was really small and into classical music. With full awareness of the historical incorrectness, I am really glad to have watched the film and would definitely recommend it.