Film review: Amadeus (1984) [Director's cut]

Can't believe I haven't seen this before now.  I am very familiar with several scenes (mostly involving Salieri being humiliated) but not the whole thing.  And when I say "whole thing," I mean all THREE HOURS of it, because the version on Amazon Prime is the "director's cut" - always ominous.  The director in this case being Milos Forman, the member of the Czech New Wave responsible for Loves of a Blonde and The Firemen's Ball, before coming over to Hollywood and directing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.  I liked the two Czech films (the latter more than the former, because the former is too sad), and Jami's a particular fan of the farcical Ball (which is clearly a satire of Soviet-style bureaucracy, which is probably either why he had to leave Czechoslovakia or his last shot as he went out the door) but having seen Amadeus I now realize that they have the same slightly chilly distance (the fact that both Forman's parents died in concentration camps invite speculation) that is really evident in this film.  Forman's specialty is sumptuously framed (and colored) still shots, within which humans act out their silly, self-defeating irrational games.  (I wouldn't be surprised to find that he was an influence on Wes Anderson.)  But I don't find myself identifying with any of the humans whose behavior we observe at a distance.  Certainly in the case of this film, it is hard to.  Salieri is a pitiful figure, but he is nonetheless monstrous.

And Mozart, for whom we should have compassion, is filtered through Salieri's gaze and never much more than a buffoon, an inexplicable vessel for music of genius.  (As he says at one point "I am a vulgar man - but my music is not.")

There is no real attempt to represent Mozart's life - even major events, like his marriage (which appears to be happy, despite it being to the common daughter of his landlady) and the birth of his son, just happen off screen.  Really the only scenes that jump out at you are the famous scenes of Salieri's humiliation, first when Mozart proves that he has memorized the ditty that Salieri composed to welcome him to Vienna by playing it, and as he does so, recomposing it on the spot, improving it instantly,

and then second when he is at a party offering to play parodies of particular composers and the masked Salieri suggests his own name, whereupon Mozart follows an insulting banal number with a gigantic fart.  Oh, and of course the scene where Mozart's wife brings some of his work to Salieri and Salieri is able to hear it in his head just by reading it:

And that's it.  Except... we went to bed with half an hour left and then resumed the film the next night, and I found the last half hour riveting.  It's Mozart on his deathbed composing the Requiem (which Salieri, disguised to make Mozart think he's the ghost of his father (or something) has himself commissioned) while Salieri transcribes it.  It's a clinic of acting by F. Murray Abraham, who won the Oscar for this (has he ever done anything before or since?  He must have originated the role on stage or something) and the underrated Tom Hulce (whom I only know for Animal House otherwise - oh, and as the voice of Quasimodo in Disney's Hunchback), and is transcendent.  It's disappointing that the whole story seems made up whole cloth, and Mozart actually rumored to be very shy (although his letters to his beloved sister, whom (my 1972 Blue Peter Annual informed me called "Horseface") are supposed to be filthy).