I romanticised film based on minor historiography revolving around the antics of Composers from the late eighteenth Century.
Will sign me up.
We have a wonderful romanticised story of Mozart as told from the perspective of the very elderly and seemingly unstable Antonio Salieri.
A man who seems to have loved and hated Mozart in just about every way shape and form.
Loved his music, performances and saw everything he made while simultaneously tiring to destroy Mozart's career.
It makes for a wonderful contrast as you watch this person's mental state start to break down as they become a more deplorable person.
Watching Mozart who starts off as a cocky upbeat celebrity inevitably becomes depressed and downtrodden throw alcoholism and high amounts of emotional stress.
I'd say the film's highest strength is in its set design and sound editing.
Utilising all the vast talents of the classical age of Music. Incorporating various Melodies and tunes into the story. Sometimes for symbolic reasoning and sometimes just described the thinking process of the song being created.
I also love its use of cutaway transitions using different sound effects. With a musical cue in one scene becoming a practical sound in the background of another scene. And how they blend together throughout the film.
The acting for the most part is fairly good. Everybody gets a proper and solid performance for the respective character. It all feels a little disingenuous. One: because it's all just basic Modern English with little attempt to adjusted for the time.
The performance of Tom Hulce (who plays Mozart) is a little too modern feeling for my taste.
He sounds like a guy transported back in time 200 years from a different part of the world.
Like you plug the typical American actor and just said; ''Hey now you're in Habsburg Austria during the days of Emperor Joseph II. Go have fun now.''
But really I can kind of forgive his performance. It does grow in me as the film progresses and he's supposed to be an oddball from the start, so I can kind of forgive how weird is performance was.
But then you have his wife who played by Elizabeth Berridge and she just feels out of place to me the whole time.
Her performance isn't particularly bad or anything. But she also just feels like another American strangely out of tune with the world she's in.
And unfortunately her characters not supposed to be an oddball. So it just comes off as a bit disconnected.
Costume designs really good too. It rides that line between historical reenactment and highly stylized Hollywood clothing. And for the record sometimes the Hollywood clothing looks better than the actual uniforms in real life.
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