Man on the Moon (1999)

Director: Miloš Morman

Cast: Jim Carrey, Danny DeVito, Courtney Love, Paul Giamatti

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, my. This, along with Three Kings (1999), My Dog Skip (1999) (my sister was and is crazy for anything with dogs in it), and, naturally, Batman (1989) were the first four DVDs I ever owned. It seems like a long time ago, but also at times feels like it was just yesterday.

Did I Like It: Those first few dozen times I watched the film, I couldn’t help but become a little obsessed with Kaufman (Carrey). Not quite to the degree that Carrey became obsessed. Who could? It is a fairly apt primer into the ethos Kaufman strove for in his all-too-brief career. If you are getting ready to watch the film for the first time, it will bother you, it will annoy you, and it will occasionally be very funny. At no time will there be a moment where any of this is done by accident. At it’s very best, and if you’re with Kaufman in what he was trying to do, you’ll start to re-think what entertainment can actually be.

And yet, a movie hits differently after you have not seen it in quite a while, but saw so many times at a particular time in your life. The flaws creep up. I now realize that there was no way Kaufman was playing Ms. Pac-Man when George Shapiro (DeVito) tells him that he closed the deal to get him to star in Taxi. That show premiered in 1978, and didn’t start popping up in arcades until 1982. That’s a nitpicky thing, and the kind of thing I only pick up on in movies after I went past the age of 16, but now that we’re on the topic of DeVito, Taxi, and George Shapiro: the movie does go to great lengths to re-create scenes of that show, but has to bend over backwards to be a world that includes George Shapiro, Andy Kaufman, and Taxi, but doesn’t also include Danny DeVito or Louie De Palma.

Amadeus (1984)

Director: Miloš Forman

Cast: F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, Elizabeth Berridge, Simon Callow

Have I Seen it Before: Certainly. Despite its R rating, I have a strange memory of see most of the movie in my youth, as showing (certain parts) of the film was the “giving up” action of a music teacher in elementary school. That’s an ugly way to see a movie, honestly. Let the kids skip the movie, and watch it in its full context later on, if you ask me.

Did I Like It: I’m pretty sure only Forman could bring to life the ultimately vulgar reality of Mozart to life. Between Andy Kaufman and Larry Flint, it might seem like the story of the greatest classical composer would be an aberration. But working with source material like Peter Shaffer’s stage play makes it almost inevitable that Forman and Mozart would find one another.

The production is immaculate, with every attempt made to authentically recreate the later years of the eighteenth century, even if the vast majority of the audience would have no way of knowing if the film achieved any sort of historical accuracy. It largely is not accurate, as scholars have long since proven that Salieri could not have been responsible for Mozart’s death, and Mozart was not dumped in a mass grave. However, there is no trace of contemporary fashion in the production, so people years from now would not be able to place it in the context of other films produced in the 1980s. Timelessness in this fashion lends credibility, even if the story is nearly completely fiction.

Tom Hulce brings the title character to such vivid life, it’s a wonder that he didn’t enjoy a more notable career in motion pictures beyond the role. It’s also hard not to imagine what might have happened if Mark Hamill might have played the role instead, as he was playing the role on Broadway at the time, but was dismissed as a prospect for the movie because Forman decided people would not be able to think of the actor outside of his involvement with Star Wars.

But this movie is only tangentially about Mozart, right? Abraham as Salieri is one of the more delicate balancing acts of the movies. Functionally the villain and the protagonist of the story (Mozart has no arc other than to burn out his talent and die), he is sympathetic, likable, odious, and unrepentant, often moment-to-moment. His tale of woe and jealousy fueled by a contempt for a world which did not see fit to reward the sacrifices he thinks he has made for his future success. In that sense, even though the film is a foreign subject made by a foreign director, the tragedy of Salieri might be the most American tale ever put to film.