Triumphantly musical

Rating: 9/10 (2 September 2010)

Milos Forman's film of the life of Mozart is long, flamboyant, not especially subtle, defiantly unhistorical and above all else, triumphantly musical. It will tell you almost nothing about the real Mozart's life, but it is steeped in his work, which infuses the whole film with vitality and purpose. The only thing I didn't like was the way that Forman sidesteps the problem of making antique dialogue sound both plausible and fresh by having every word uttered in contemporary American, which never completely ceases to jar. Among the cast, I particularly enjoyed Jeffrey Jones (the emperor) and his display of understated stupidity; Muaary Abraham won Oscars as Salieri, but it's a showy role, albeit in a film that is showy, and wonderfully so.