Robert Peters responds to me:

>>>The movie tells us that someone who wants to make a deal with God and
>>>thinks that the giving of gifts like musical talent can be manipulated
>>>by a "good" and morally correct life-style will be surprised
>about life's
>>>unfairness.
>>
>>Does anybody seriously believe this idea? I can't quite accept the fact
>>that an 18th-century person would believe it, let alone a modern.  After
>>all, there are such things as the book of Job and Voltaire's Candide.
>
>Why is it so unbelievable that someone sticks to this idea? A lot of very
>religious people of the past and the present time did resp.  do so.  - And
>yes, there is the book of Job: how many people knew it? There is Candide:
>how many people knew it?

Wait a minute.  You can't have it both ways.  If this isn't about history
(and of course it isn't), then don't bring in historical justification.
How many people today know Job or Candide? Obviously, not very many if
they're satisfied with Shaffer's handling of the idea.  Neither Job nor
Candide solve the "problem" of people who deserve better suffering.  But
both provide far more interesting explorations.

>My problem with your criticism is that you don't go into detail.  You say
>the movie has no ideas and is sentimental: prove it by analysing a scene
>or several scenes of the movie.  Take the deathbed scene: where is there
>sentimentality?

I'll take you up on this.  I do have a copy of the play, and that's what
I'll use.  On the other hand, you haven't really analyzed a scene either.
You've simply pointed to scenes and posit what they're about.  I don't
disagree with anything you've said.  To me, however, they add up to mighty
little.  But, as I said, I'll analyze the deathbed scene in detail.

>No, it just shows you to be very rigorous.  Art is free and so Shaffer is
>free to take Mozart and use him for an artistic purpose.

Yes, but he doesn't use him very well.

>You may not like
>it but artists are free to do so and this has nothing to do with lacking
>precision.

By precision, I mean a precise observation of human beings and a
particularity of argument, not the precision of setting forth Mozart's life.

>Shaffer just didn't want to be precise about Mozart and there is no
>law forcing him to be precise.  Amadeus is a work of art, a fantasy about
>Mozart, not an essay.  Would you criticize our hero Mozart because his Don
>Giovanni is an imprecise fantasy about Casanova and not an accurate essay?

Again, of course not.  But Mozart gives me something more than an essay.
He gives me precisely observed portraits of a womanizer, his pandar, and
the women he ruins, not to mention great music.  Shaffer gives me little
stick men and fairly unexciting language.

>Could you please either stop ranting about the movie or starting to show
>your points by analysing and proving? What about the movie is not
>original?

Good people suffer.  Gosh, I didn't know that before.  You're right, it's
original as all get-out.

>Where does the movie or the play show that Shaffer hasn't earned sentiment?
>(And it is necessary to earn sentiment? A pretty strange idea, isn't it?)

Sentiment unearned is embarrassing and laughable in a work of art.  I may
be sincere as a nun, and it wouldn't redeem the following:

   O, I am undone.  Woe is me!  Alas!

   You must pay the rent!

   But I can't pay the rent!

   Then I shall tie you to a railroad track!

   Well, maybe I will pay the rent.

That's one of the things bad poetry fails to do.  It speaks sentiments
which sound false because it can't speak any other way.  It fails to earn
the reader's respect and belief.  Is there anything wrong with the emotion
behind "Did Your Mother Come from Ireland?" No. But there's a lot wrong
with the lyric.

Steve Schwartz