Movie: Amadeus

I have what I think to be an moderate-to-maybe-getting-large movie collection. There's about 100 movies over there, not counting any TV series box sets or MST3K episodes. I've run into people only have 20 or so, but on the other hand I've also run into people who have over 1000.

However, I'm actually thinking of paring down, or at least enacting a "one in/one out" policy for a while. There's a few reasons for this. First, my tastes have changed. Some movies over there, I'm not as fond of now as when I bought them. Second, some of them were bought because at the time, it was the only way to see them. (Remember, I like some fairly odd things: silents, foreign, and/or not-so-famous classics.) That practice had a certain number of misses. Luckily, with Netflix, a lot of movies I previously would have had to buy, I can now just borrow. And finally, when I did the math I realized that for a movie that is available to rent, it isn't worth buying unless I'm going to watch it at least five times.

Ultimately, I'd like to pare my collection down to the movies I really love and watch at least once a year if not more often, and the ones that are relatively rare and thus hard to get on demand if I get an urge to see them. I'm not actively pruning my shelves, but for now if I happen to notice one that yeah, I'll never miss that, I'll move it to the "for trade" shelf. Likewise, if I watch a movie from my collection, afterward I decide "do I want to keep this, or can it go?"

So, what does this all have to do with the movie Amadeus? Well, Amadeus was one I bought on a whim around the time of the last Oscar ceremony. Barnes and Noble was having a sale on former Oscar winners, you see, and I was in a "stressed out, want a toy" state on top of it, so this one caught my eye. I'd seen it before and liked it fairly well, so it went home with me. I had an urge to watch it this week, so I popped it in, and afterwards asked myself "So, keep or trade?"

I'm going to keep it, and I can't give a good reason why. Objectively, it's 2 hours and 40 minutes of composers snarking each other. I won't watch it very often, because it is a 2 hour and 40 minute time commitment. And on top of that, it's so long that the disk has to be flipped over halfway through; I hate double-sided disks. I have to squint to tell what side I'm supposed to put up, and I still miss sometimes.

And yet, the movie just has that special something. I think part of it is, what creative hasn't felt like Salieri at one time or other? Remember, Salieri was not a bad composer. He actually did quite well for himself. His works were successful in their time, and he was court composer and later Kapellmeister. The problem is that Salieri was a good composer, living in the midst of genius. I can imagine his frustration, working so hard and with so much passion and yet always falling short of his vision, and then encountering this snotty little upstart who practically has perfect music fall out of his ass. Now not only does he feel like he can't do anything right, there's walking proof that it can be done, just not by him. And in the end, he can't even succeed at murdering the guy; Mozart's rude enough to just kick off on his own before he gets the chance.

Yet on the other side, I think we've all felt a little like Mozart, too. Imagine every day, seeing some hack have great success while your best efforts -- work you think is nearly perfect -- are barely even acknowledged. What incredible, maddening frustration one must feel.

Do I recommend this one? I can't really say yay or nay, because I don't even know why I like it, much less whether someone else would. Give it a try; don't blame me either way.