"Amadeus" is Achilles' favourite movie. IT'S TRUE!

Off to Toronto tomorrow for zoo and interviewy goodness! To everyone who has wished me good luck, my nerves and I thank you. <3 I even very unexpectedly received a good luck phone call today from someone who is famous enough to have his own Wikipedia page, although if I were to actually tell you who he is I guarantee you'd be even less impressed than you are now. xD

Anyway, I've just finished watching Amadeus which was an even better distraction from my nerves than I had hoped! And since athena_crikey's most recent entry is a fangirly entry, I have found the courage so that mine will be, too. xD

Query: is Salieri an unreliable narrator??

Believe it or not, I had never considered this idea before today. Here are my three main reasons as to why perhaps he is:

1) I noticed this a long while ago and never thought much of it because it's not that uncommon in fiction, but there are a fair number of scenes that Salieri didn't witness and couldn't have heard about that are still included in this movie, and so, we assume, in the story as he tells it to the priest. Basically, everything that happens in the Mozarts' home during the times when Lorl isn't working there, Salieri has no way of knowing about.

2) Wolfie says he'll sleep and then they'll start work on the Lacrimosa. They never do get to work on it, but nevertheless it plays in its entirety over the funeral scene. Is this the movie trying again to push the idea that Wolfie's music was all already finished in his head? Or is this a hint that Salieri has been lying to us a little bit? (hahaha of course when talking about this movie I always ignore historical fact. Yesterday I finished reading Piero Melograni's biography of Mozart and wow, there's actually way more factual issues with the Requiem arc of Amadeus than I realized! I mean obviously the entire movie is fictionalized and I totally accept that, but still I find it really interesting to compare it with what we believe actually happened.)

3) Man you guys, I have seen this movie so many times and I still don't know what to make of the ending. (By which I mean the very end, when we're back in the asylum and Salieri has taken it upon himself to absolve everyone he sees.) Maybe it's just me, I dunno, but I'm always so confused by it. But to fit in with my hypothesis of Salieri the unreliable narrator, maybe the ending is supposed to clue us in that he's crazier than we would have previously thought? And so maybe we can't believe a word he's said and maybe nothing he claims happened actually did? ... ?

And now I am totally reading through all these old e-mails I wrote to the_wykydtron like two years ago that are filled with analytical brilliance about Salieri's motivations (SPOILER WARNING FOR THE DIRECTOR'S CUT lulz if anybody cares): ( Read more... )

And although it's only midnight, I guess I should get some sleep ... I've been trying pretty well in vain to adjust to a much better schedule, considering the interviews on Tuesday start at six a.m. our time ... D:

Longer letter later~! :D

Edit a day later: ( Read more... )