Ars longa, vita brevis

Dereck 2021-10-18 19:50:36

This is a film review that doesn't want to talk about technology.

I did not deliberately read it again. I just want to talk about it, when you forget that there are cameras behind these actors, but only you, it is rough, not through the multi-layered knowledge processing, and the most time-tested memory experience.

The last time was a cold night before Christmas in New York a few years ago. A boutique hotel found a well-preserved film copy and held a screening in its own underground cinema. There are naturally some scratches in the picture. There are only ten people in twos and threes. The producer and the heroine are also there. Three hours will pass quickly and it will be the Q&A. Everyone talks about the process for an hour, from preparation to shooting. , And some interesting things are indispensable, until the audience has asked all the questions, they are still reluctant to give up. At that time, I suddenly felt that the distance between film art and the audience was to face each other. There was no support or stepping on. Frankly speaking, stepping is also very laborious. Whoever wants to look around all the time can only step on. Can you hate it?


Individual struggle is possible, but historical process is indispensable. The filming itself is quite suitable. Foreman went into exile in the United States. After filming "Flying Over the Cuckoo's Asylum", he never thought that one day he would return to his home country to make a movie. The hotel was pretended to be wiretapped during the whole process, and where the secret police followed sneakily, like a movie. Regarding Mozart's biopic, what conspiracy and trickery (although it is not impossible) can be devised to collude with the enemy and traitor.

Foreman, who grew up under the iron curtain, knew too well what those things that weren't things were. It would be difficult to shoot "Flying Over the Cuckoo's Asylum" without the scarred wounds. Although there was no cadre secretary in Vienna in the 18th century, it was the same for the paternalistic authoritarian elders to discipline and discipline rebellious young people. Daddy stood at the door, no matter whether you wrote well or not, he was disappointed by the gas lamp when he came up, making people automatically feel guilty and breathless. A few old undead brows and a few words can create that kind of disgusting dean-style depression in a few strokes. In the end it is occupying the power to explain how art is and what is beauty. Virtue is not coordinated, but it is placed in a position that can crush you, controlling the edge of your self-realization. This is what we feel about the head nurse in "Flying Over the Cuckoo's Asylum" or Umbridge in "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", which stems from childhood almost PTSD-style physical discomfort. You can say that they represent or symbolize the kind of evil that inhibits the growth of life; you can also say that evil tentacles and minions, physical extensions, will control you if they can't do anything else. Whether the individual perishes and adheres to it, it is still a sheet of paper that grows out. They are not only living people, only human forms, just evil mediocrity, and they can only be abstract "them".

Salieri is different. Are people. It's us. You cannot see Salieri's suffering, piety, sacrifice, grievance, vanity, unwillingness, resentment, shame, and jealousy in "them". You also don't see "they" have Salieri's appreciation, regret, self-blame, or even true admiration in the end. The short moment before Mozart's death was written by Salieri.

Why don't you understand? No, no, you are too fast, I don't understand.

On that side, I looked like I was crying, and then I thought that the assignment was ready for work, and the contrast between the genius just about to display his talents made me worried. These are all too familiar feelings, as long as you want to fight for a moment. When I was in middle school, I was annoyed that I couldn’t solve a math problem. I calmed down and took a long time to do it, but there are always people who can tell the answer without writing a draft. Of course, you don’t think of killing your classmates, but thinking that you are too stupid. The cult of intelligence is of course pathological, but we are forced to compare nakedly at all times. From Renaissance painters to middle school classrooms, the question of "do you or not" is tormenting us.

But Salieri finally touched the divinity he had coveted all his life. Even though it was so short, he knew what he had done at that moment. Understand that some things are higher than us. Higher than the individual, even higher than the author, the person who takes over knows that it has a greater responsibility to keep it, just like the "Aeneas" poem that Virgil wanted to burn before his death. His salvation was not the confession of admitting that he was the murderer in the mental hospital when he was old, but the confession of Mozart's life at the last moment. After all... he could also be burned or he wrote it.

On the other hand, they always have only the kind of arrogance that you can do with me. It seems that the principal is standing on the leading stage and looking around. It is good for hundreds of people to do radio exercises together, which is an extension of self-will. See how proud they are scribbling Mozart's manuscripts, is it good to have Salieri's courage to admit what is beautiful and what is good? Fortunately, although the villain Dezhi is despicable, it does not seem to have much depth. The eunuch is bad, that is, the bad thing is that there are many kinds of sm props. It is difficult to humanize them, and it seems unimaginable to do what normal people do. Do you expect him to be a god in their eyes?


A friend once joked to me that although words like positive energy and feudal poisonous weeds are stupid, there are too many poisonous weeds here. Either it is an aphrodisiac or a poison. It is addictive, fast death, and happy as a ghost. There is almost nothing that really gives you strength. Aspirations must be extinguished, talents must be let down, pain and incompetence must be addicted. Even Li Bai "put the white deer between the green cliffs" and laughed up to the sky, avoiding the world to eat old wine.

Salieri was supposed to be the person who knew Mozart best, but instead of doing high mountains and flowing water, he had to be a special examiner to beat him. There was an emperor who didn’t understand but had to pretend to understand, a few gesticulating musicians as the leader, a suffocating dad who suffocated him since childhood, and a philistine who raised a daughter and "played you" like a dog. ) Boss, there is a snobbish mother-in-law. Even he himself squandered his talent wantonly. Admittedly, the only unlucky one is his wife.

How lonely. Good things are like prisoners of the world, but also like hope for freedom and truth. They can't be shut down.

Mozart had nowhere to go and wrote "The Magic Flute", which is equivalent to writing "Anna Karenin" on the emotional public account; the mother-in-law chased after a curse, his eyes brightened, everything cut to the aria after the night, the original intention It's humor, but how can it make people immobile? (Of course I know this is not true.)

I'm nasty, but my music is not. (I'm a vulgar man. but I assure you, my music is not.)

Mozart’s music is an arrow that pierces the cloud. Shakespeare put it best:

Who doth permit the base contagious clouds To smother up his beauty from the world, That when he please again to be himself, Being wanted, he may be more wondered at By breaking through the foul and ugly mists Of vapours that did seem to strangle him .
—Henry IV, Part 1 1.2.205–210

The birds in the cage want to sing, and the gardenias fragrant happily. Shawshankli publicly released (it happens to be) "The Marriage of Figaro", as it is sung in Sia's vulgar song, I don't care, I want to sing, and I have to sing out of tune. It's not a fight for a breath, it's not my fate, it's not that I can't help it, it's not that it's just that we all die together. The rain washed the devastated land, and a flower burst out of a crack in the stone.

It turns out that the beauty of the world gives people strength and hope in this way. As the saying goes, I suddenly discovered that it is not death that is endless, but endless life. A tragedy is a tragedy, the first half is sunny and vigorous, and the second half is cold and windy with frost on the snow. But it doesn't matter if you wipe your tears. The good music really stayed, the moment of life, and the eternal art. We can't castrate, we can't castrate, beauty belongs to all of us.


Foreman passed away in 18 years, so in the summer, I watched a documentary of his life at the film festival, not long. This was the last file of the day. As expected, there were very few viewers, and I was reminded of that night in New York. An old couple was still in high spirits at first, and just 15 minutes after watching the director's parents died in the concentration camp, they got up and left. … At the end, Foreman moved back to the Czech Republic. At the end, he said a few words. My general idea is: Although they have fallen, our brains that have been damaged by them will take a long time and several generations to fix.

I deeply agree.

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Extended Reading
  • Hilton 2021-10-20 19:01:06

    Only I understand you in this world, this is my glory, this is my sorrow.

  • Eulalia 2022-04-24 07:01:02

    It's really a masterpiece of classical aesthetics, with delicate and complicated scenes and lighting, and the traditional "protagonist + narration" narrative, I'm embarrassed to give it four stars. The plot is actually a bit cliché, the faces of the supporting actors in the palace, and the actions driven by Salieri's admiration and jealousy are almost predictable. But the interpretation of the protagonists is really in place, there are many shocking and colorful passages, and the most moving is Mozart, who is dying at the end, humming the Requiem. The world doesn't deserve genius.

Amadeus quotes

  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: I am fed to the teeth with elevated themes! Old dead legends! Why must we go on forever writing about gods and legends?

    Baron Van Swieten: Because they do. They go on forever. Or at least what they represent. The eternal in us. Opera is here to ennoble us. You and me, just the same as His Majesty.

  • Antonio Salieri: [reflecting upon a Mozart score] On the page it looked nothing. The beginning simple, almost comic. Just a pulse. Bassoons and basset horns, like a rusty squeezebox. And then suddenly, high above it, an oboe. A single note, hanging there, unwavering. Until a clarinet took over and sweetened it into a phrase of such delight! This was no composition by a performing monkey! This was a music I'd never heard. Filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing, it had me trembling. It seemed to me that I was hearing the voice of God.