Steve Schwartz replies 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?

>>The movie shows us how unhappy Salieri was, how he works to destroy Mozart
>>and how shattered he is at his actual death, after the first real intense
>>human contact he had when composing the Requiem with his colleague - this
>>is a bone with a lot of meat.
>
>Why? What on earth makes you think so? Why isn't it merely sentimental
>longeurs? Of course, I would never attack a work of art on its ideas if
>the play itself were good enough to distract me - the language, the
>particularlity and precision of the observation, etc.

I think so because of the actual scene in the movie, because of the
intensity of the actors, because of the hints regarding the characters'
feelings and emotions.  I think so because of a lot of scenes (Salieri
hiding in a balcony watching Don Giovanni and being - explicitly said in
the movie - the only one to understand Mozart).  I think so because all
these scenes, especially the deathbed scenes, show not a single trait of
sentimentality.

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?

>>Mozart is just a symbol for the problem of how to deal with genius when
>>it comes your way, Shaffer could as well have taken Goethe, Dante,
>>Shakespeare.
>
>Yes, he could have.  Indeed, there's no good reason at all why the
>character is called Mozart, rather than Goethe or even Fred.  This speaks
>to the issue of particularity and precision, or rather to its lack.

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

>>He took Mozart in a play full of clever ideas, some of them, as I
>>have shown above (Steve, only my opinion I am entitled to but proven
>>a bit better than your statements), pretty original and moving and
>>thought-provoking.
>
>Original? Hardly.  Moving and thought-provoking? I don't doubt that it
>moved and provoked you and several million others.  As for me, I'll take
>Richard II or The Master Builder.

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?

>>But I guess if you want to be biased against emotional art you won't be
>>able to see things in a different way.
>
>Who says? After all I've written on Vaughan Williams, Faure, and Richard
>Strauss? Them's fightin' words, pardner!  I *do* dislike sentimentality,
>which is simply sentiment that the writer hasn't earned.

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?)

Robert