Anything But Mediocrity

Rating: 8/10 (14 January 2017)

Milos Formans, "Amadeus" is a film that for me could have had the potential to be either a fascinating insight into how a pointless rivalry destroyed the lives of two good men or an overlong bore that failed to intrigue me as I have got literally zero interest in music but I found that this film fell into the former category and found it to be fantastic. This film doesn't really have one good character to get behind, everyone has hopes and loses that you all feel, everyone is flawed and down to earth, I found myself never being able to ultimately pick one side in the film. Both characters are developed perfectly You understand just how much their music means to both of them and why they need to hold on to it, it gives a fantastic insight into there mind sets and makes them more investing as well as interesting characters. Every thing in this film production wise is fantastic all the eccentric costumes, palaces and gutters look perfect. F Murray Abraham won an Academy Award for his performance in this film and I've seen few performances more deserving he is so convincing as a conflicted man shamed with his inability to advance beyond mediocrity, he's perfect at balancing both the young idealistic and older fragile versions of his character, he always had me engaged and he was truly amazing in this movie. Tom Hulce who I have seen literally nothing else from is fantastic in this movie, he's over the top laugh, excitable tendencies yet committed nature made him an entertaining character to watch and was the perfect opposition for Abraham. It's also a very dark film to watch at times, the way in which these two men's lives begin to fall apart isn't truly heartbreaking as ,like is said, they are developed perfectly so you understand the stakes of their rivalry. But I loved that they didn't necessarily hate each other but were really jealous of each other and their eventual bond towards the end of the film made for an extremely satisfying conclusion to their arc. One of my only real issues with this movie is the love story between Mozart and his wife, it gets extremely repetitive and dull after a while and his wife was completely unlikable to I ultimately just ended up not caring at anything of her turmoil. Another issue was the present day story line with the mental asylum it was mainly he Actor who played the priest who gave a fairly bad performance, just relying on the same facial expressions to carry his portrayal and got on my nerves after a while.
Amadeus is a fantastic film, it's got no one side or character to route for, everyone is perfect developed, it looks stunning in every aspect it was just the love story and some aspects of the present day story line that began to bother me at times which are only minor issues in a much more impressive picture.
88%/A-