Love this… I actually think this is one of the best movies about a famous artist (of whatever kind), partly because it had an outsider perspective much of the time — focusing on that mystery as you say — and partly because I think they do a really good job of showing that there’s something about the process that feels almost outside of Mozart (Hulce), which I remember reading about in college from Plato and Eliot and so on… they thought it was some kind of divine inspiration and that’s not what this movie is doing but I think the flow state can feel kind of like that.
Made better of course because he’s such a dummy in other ways…!
Love this Fran, such a good movie!!! That scene where Salieri is sight-reading Mozart’s original sheet music is probably one of the best music-movie scene ever, it really captures the love and obsession of it. Also, i both love and am occasionally haunted by Amadeus’ laugh
I think the sound-editing of partially diegetic music is really special in the film - could feel corny in execution but really helps show the ways in which these guys back then knew how to sight-read/hear music.
Interesting--my own dad is a total Amadeus hater, on the grounds of the historical inaccuracy, but he can be a bit snooty and fastidious like that. What sticks with me, having not watched it for years, is that it's one of the great explorations of envy (up there with https://granta.com/envy/) and the complex combination of admiration, resentment, frustration that go with it--an emotion I really suffer from, so I admire it for that reason. I feel like Salieri spends the whole time going "why/how am I alive at the same time as this person," both in horror and enthralled.
I think that's probably right though I have a boxset of his TV movie composer flicks and am curious to see those in context. Mahler certainly the best of his theatrical trio though, but I haven't seen Lisztomania in forever.
shoutout to the Mozart Bassoon Concerto, a piece so important to bassoon rep that you don't even need to identify it further it is simply THE Mozart Bassoon Concerto
Thrilled to see this in my box today Fran. I was at IFC the other day and torn between rewatching In the Mood For Love or rewatching Amadeus and I opted for W K-w's beautiful "gut punch" (Claire's words), which has a gorgeous score composed by Michael Galasso. Anyway, back to IFC- thanks for the nudge.
Does Brody like any movies about artists? His reviews always have an air of either complaining that the film doesn’t have the same read on its subject that he does or panning it for the purpose of spending more time talking about the subject than the film. Whiplash review clears though
The Whiplash piece is one of my most cited film reviews because it’s a perfect case of how even Brody’s bad faith misreadings can get across something valuable about an artwork; in this case, how the movie’s incuriosity about jazz reflects the overall shallowness of its construction. Chazelle is such a bad screenwriter! And it’s a very funny piece of writing by Brody ofc
The first time I watched this film (director's cut), Salieri's exasperation on Mozart's deathbed made me burst into tears -- no matter how cruel he is to Mozart, it's so painful to see him realize his own limitations. And the way Abraham plays it is so beautiful! To your point about him trying to figure out "the trick," in this final scene between them, I think he finally realizes that there is no trick to Mozart's brilliance. Mozart's just better. For all its imperfections, I think this is what makes the thing a masterpiece.
Yes, Abraham is especially great in that last half hour of the film, and most especially in that final scene of the two of them together. "You're going too fast," etc. - he is desperately trying to keep up and realizing he is just barely able to hang onto that which has long eluded him. I also prefer the director's cut which I maybe should have mentioned above, though I think that's the less popular opinion with this one....
In what I'm now thinking is not a coincidence, on my last visit to my partner's parents', her dad threw this on after dinner and proceeded to explain several of the bits while we were watching, seemingly unaware that we are Adults of Average Intelligence who can Understand a Joke. It came out of nowhere and he'd never in the 14 years I've known him mentioned this movie before. Unspoken Dad Canon.
"Without the lyrics, you’re left with seemingly limitless melodies, notes stacking and tripling and jumping all over each other. How does he know how far it should go? Where does he know to break or stop? Mozart is inventing a system in real time; to listen to him is not unlike when people who love math tell you that math is really beautiful if you know how to look at it."
Yeah!!! I'm a huge classical music novice (though I am trying to fix this, partially through helpful tips provided in previous issues of FM), but as an equally huge nerd this does remind me of a complaint I read once about Gene Wolfe from Alan Jacobs: "he knits and purls, always stitching stitching stitching, ever complicating the weave, to a degree that seems to me compulsive and often, frankly, counterproductive."
I am inherently kind of attracted to artists who overstitch the weave like this, but it's sometimes hard to tell whether I'm attracted to the beauty of the pattern or just its complexity.
There's an early Romantic era composer named Georges Bizet - most famous for composing the opera Carmen - who went through the rigamarole of conventional classical music education that required him to write concertos and symphonies. His first symphony in C feels like a parody of Mozart, both in the overstuffed nature of the notes, as well as in the speed and rhythm. You can chalk this up to someone having fun, but you also have to take into account that he wrote it as a teenager, and though I think much of the reality of being a teenager has changed in the world, it's still true that DOING A LOT OF STUFF and GOING REALLY FAST feel like the most fun you can have at that age. Check out the final movement at the 25:29 mark and tell me that's not complicating the weave! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STvVanu1fQU&ab_channel=NederlandsPhilharmonisch%26NederlandsKamerorkest
I always really like listening to composers' early work because they often have that youthful energy and I do think with someone like Wolfe (whose name carries with it a lot of respect in my home though I shamefully have not read) it all comes off like a boundless energy that can't help but play out on the page.
waited the day to listen and this is soooooo fire...i know this is boss baby syndrome but it reminds me of tchaikovsky violin concerto in D which i used to listen to for doing homework. lively! lovely!
SPRINTING to the comments to talk about Wolfe in this, or any, context. This is a really interesting comparison, as I love Wolfe with all my heart, and couldn't really care less about Mozart, and find the complexity of his music ("too many notes," as they say in the film) to lead to stagnation and ear-fatigue. I often don't agree with Jacobs, but I think his assessment of the online Wolfe discourse is spot on, that most of the discussions of his writing (particularly Peace, Fifth Head, and the various New Sun sagas), sees the incredibly dense overlaying of symbols as puzzles to be solved, through which all of the lore and meaning that Wolfe occults from the surface of his novels can be discovered, until one finally "understands" what the deal with Father Inire's mirrors are, how and why each character relates to the saint or literary creation they're named after, etc.... Which is missing the fact that his compulsive knitting and purling is a just a reflection of the ways in which our pattern seeking brains give order to the world.
To bring the whole thing back to Amadeus, there is a modestly successful Evangelical SF/F writer who is particularly active in online Gene Wolfe spaces despite seemingly hating Gene Wolfe, and his view of Wolfe really maps well onto F. Murray's Salieri-- someone who is disgusted by this weird guy with a 'perverse understanding of christianity' who was never-the-less granted this generational talent that he himself is unable to grasp.
Of all the discourses around authors, his is the one that I have found almost inevitably turns exegetical...I like all of what I've read very much but on my first readings I definitely approached him too much like homework. There is a tendency to define him by his creed and insist that all his symbols have to be pointing to some final revelation at the end of time...not really! Peace, in particular, cuts everything off in your face; what you see is very much what you get.
When and if I do revisit him I will probably be more inclined to focus on surface pleasures: Jonas (my boyfriend), the road to Thrax, Master Ash's house. The stuff that stays on Earth instead of endlessly pointing to heaven.
Re Wolfe's Amadeus figure that's so funny...when the discussion around him turns to religion I almost inevitably leave, it's nightmarish.
Love this… I actually think this is one of the best movies about a famous artist (of whatever kind), partly because it had an outsider perspective much of the time — focusing on that mystery as you say — and partly because I think they do a really good job of showing that there’s something about the process that feels almost outside of Mozart (Hulce), which I remember reading about in college from Plato and Eliot and so on… they thought it was some kind of divine inspiration and that’s not what this movie is doing but I think the flow state can feel kind of like that.
Made better of course because he’s such a dummy in other ways…!
He's such a perfect dummy too! He's completely un-self-aware as I think a number of great artists are - their heads are always in the game!
Love this Fran, such a good movie!!! That scene where Salieri is sight-reading Mozart’s original sheet music is probably one of the best music-movie scene ever, it really captures the love and obsession of it. Also, i both love and am occasionally haunted by Amadeus’ laugh
I think the sound-editing of partially diegetic music is really special in the film - could feel corny in execution but really helps show the ways in which these guys back then knew how to sight-read/hear music.
Simon Callow is always hot.
Most dad film may have been Amadeus but then Peter Weir made Master and Commander: Far Side of the World.
Interesting--my own dad is a total Amadeus hater, on the grounds of the historical inaccuracy, but he can be a bit snooty and fastidious like that. What sticks with me, having not watched it for years, is that it's one of the great explorations of envy (up there with https://granta.com/envy/) and the complex combination of admiration, resentment, frustration that go with it--an emotion I really suffer from, so I admire it for that reason. I feel like Salieri spends the whole time going "why/how am I alive at the same time as this person," both in horror and enthralled.
Yes I totally agree - especially that nature of enthralling obsession and almost erotic fascination.
Just poking my head in to invoke the 30 Rock where they do Amadeus, but with Tracy creating a porn video game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7V_Nz5IGHU&t=168s
"Salieri?"
"No, thank you, I already ate."
Ken Russell’s Mahler is the best composer movie, hands down
I think that's probably right though I have a boxset of his TV movie composer flicks and am curious to see those in context. Mahler certainly the best of his theatrical trio though, but I haven't seen Lisztomania in forever.
I need to see the tv movie flicks too!
shoutout to the Mozart Bassoon Concerto, a piece so important to bassoon rep that you don't even need to identify it further it is simply THE Mozart Bassoon Concerto
Very narrow vision of film here, but Amadeus is maybe the best movie about having a pet terrier!
REAL
Thrilled to see this in my box today Fran. I was at IFC the other day and torn between rewatching In the Mood For Love or rewatching Amadeus and I opted for W K-w's beautiful "gut punch" (Claire's words), which has a gorgeous score composed by Michael Galasso. Anyway, back to IFC- thanks for the nudge.
You can't go wrong with In the Mood for Love!!!! Especially hearing that gorgeous score so loudly
Does Brody like any movies about artists? His reviews always have an air of either complaining that the film doesn’t have the same read on its subject that he does or panning it for the purpose of spending more time talking about the subject than the film. Whiplash review clears though
Had never read the Whiplash review, a true jbol. Brody artist movie theory sounds about right... his silence on Mr. Turner is deafening, I fear...
The Whiplash piece is one of my most cited film reviews because it’s a perfect case of how even Brody’s bad faith misreadings can get across something valuable about an artwork; in this case, how the movie’s incuriosity about jazz reflects the overall shallowness of its construction. Chazelle is such a bad screenwriter! And it’s a very funny piece of writing by Brody ofc
The first time I watched this film (director's cut), Salieri's exasperation on Mozart's deathbed made me burst into tears -- no matter how cruel he is to Mozart, it's so painful to see him realize his own limitations. And the way Abraham plays it is so beautiful! To your point about him trying to figure out "the trick," in this final scene between them, I think he finally realizes that there is no trick to Mozart's brilliance. Mozart's just better. For all its imperfections, I think this is what makes the thing a masterpiece.
Yes, Abraham is especially great in that last half hour of the film, and most especially in that final scene of the two of them together. "You're going too fast," etc. - he is desperately trying to keep up and realizing he is just barely able to hang onto that which has long eluded him. I also prefer the director's cut which I maybe should have mentioned above, though I think that's the less popular opinion with this one....
In what I'm now thinking is not a coincidence, on my last visit to my partner's parents', her dad threw this on after dinner and proceeded to explain several of the bits while we were watching, seemingly unaware that we are Adults of Average Intelligence who can Understand a Joke. It came out of nowhere and he'd never in the 14 years I've known him mentioned this movie before. Unspoken Dad Canon.
I'm lol
"Without the lyrics, you’re left with seemingly limitless melodies, notes stacking and tripling and jumping all over each other. How does he know how far it should go? Where does he know to break or stop? Mozart is inventing a system in real time; to listen to him is not unlike when people who love math tell you that math is really beautiful if you know how to look at it."
Yeah!!! I'm a huge classical music novice (though I am trying to fix this, partially through helpful tips provided in previous issues of FM), but as an equally huge nerd this does remind me of a complaint I read once about Gene Wolfe from Alan Jacobs: "he knits and purls, always stitching stitching stitching, ever complicating the weave, to a degree that seems to me compulsive and often, frankly, counterproductive."
I am inherently kind of attracted to artists who overstitch the weave like this, but it's sometimes hard to tell whether I'm attracted to the beauty of the pattern or just its complexity.
There's an early Romantic era composer named Georges Bizet - most famous for composing the opera Carmen - who went through the rigamarole of conventional classical music education that required him to write concertos and symphonies. His first symphony in C feels like a parody of Mozart, both in the overstuffed nature of the notes, as well as in the speed and rhythm. You can chalk this up to someone having fun, but you also have to take into account that he wrote it as a teenager, and though I think much of the reality of being a teenager has changed in the world, it's still true that DOING A LOT OF STUFF and GOING REALLY FAST feel like the most fun you can have at that age. Check out the final movement at the 25:29 mark and tell me that's not complicating the weave! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STvVanu1fQU&ab_channel=NederlandsPhilharmonisch%26NederlandsKamerorkest
I always really like listening to composers' early work because they often have that youthful energy and I do think with someone like Wolfe (whose name carries with it a lot of respect in my home though I shamefully have not read) it all comes off like a boundless energy that can't help but play out on the page.
waited the day to listen and this is soooooo fire...i know this is boss baby syndrome but it reminds me of tchaikovsky violin concerto in D which i used to listen to for doing homework. lively! lovely!
SPRINTING to the comments to talk about Wolfe in this, or any, context. This is a really interesting comparison, as I love Wolfe with all my heart, and couldn't really care less about Mozart, and find the complexity of his music ("too many notes," as they say in the film) to lead to stagnation and ear-fatigue. I often don't agree with Jacobs, but I think his assessment of the online Wolfe discourse is spot on, that most of the discussions of his writing (particularly Peace, Fifth Head, and the various New Sun sagas), sees the incredibly dense overlaying of symbols as puzzles to be solved, through which all of the lore and meaning that Wolfe occults from the surface of his novels can be discovered, until one finally "understands" what the deal with Father Inire's mirrors are, how and why each character relates to the saint or literary creation they're named after, etc.... Which is missing the fact that his compulsive knitting and purling is a just a reflection of the ways in which our pattern seeking brains give order to the world.
To bring the whole thing back to Amadeus, there is a modestly successful Evangelical SF/F writer who is particularly active in online Gene Wolfe spaces despite seemingly hating Gene Wolfe, and his view of Wolfe really maps well onto F. Murray's Salieri-- someone who is disgusted by this weird guy with a 'perverse understanding of christianity' who was never-the-less granted this generational talent that he himself is unable to grasp.
Of all the discourses around authors, his is the one that I have found almost inevitably turns exegetical...I like all of what I've read very much but on my first readings I definitely approached him too much like homework. There is a tendency to define him by his creed and insist that all his symbols have to be pointing to some final revelation at the end of time...not really! Peace, in particular, cuts everything off in your face; what you see is very much what you get.
When and if I do revisit him I will probably be more inclined to focus on surface pleasures: Jonas (my boyfriend), the road to Thrax, Master Ash's house. The stuff that stays on Earth instead of endlessly pointing to heaven.
Re Wolfe's Amadeus figure that's so funny...when the discussion around him turns to religion I almost inevitably leave, it's nightmarish.
i love math and think it's beautiful and i think of ~my art~ as applications of math btw. i still also prefer the romantics tho
I also love math, fwiw........ I am just bad at it <3
and that's okay!
IDK Fran. Based on my own upbringing I'm convinced the Most Universally Loved By Dads Film is SNEAKERS.
Throwing my hat in for The Blues Brothers
While I can get behind that, Blues Brothers has a couple of things going against it, mainly:
- No Robert Redford doing Hacker Stuff
- No Ben Kingsley In A Ponytail also doing Hacker Stuff