Amadeus (1984, Milos Forman)

It’s been long enough since I last saw Amadeus I forgot the narrative face-plant of the epilogue. The film objectifying the suffering of nineteenth-century psychiatric hospital “patients” is bad enough, but the way the film ignores it’s spent the second half of the nearly three-hour film away from narrator F. Murray Abraham… Well. It doesn’t go well, dragging Amadeus down in what ought to be its victory lap.

Albeit a victory lap all about Mozart’s death. The film’s way too enthusiastic about Abraham’s performance, which is fantastic, but it’s better in the flashback than the old age makeup bookends. And Amadeus, despite the title and the magnificent, meticulous directing Forman does with Tom Hulce (as Mozart), tries its damndest to convince everyone Abraham’s character, a never-will-be composer who engineers the downfall of Hulce as an affront to God, is the lead. And Abraham is the lead in the first half of the picture; the film opens with Vincent Schiavelli (playing Vincent Schiavelli) finding boss Abraham in the middle of a suicide attempt. They take Abraham to the hospital, where he recuperates, and a young priest (Richard Frank) comes to hear his confession.

Frank thinks Abraham is exaggerating or lying when he tells everyone he meets how he killed Mozart; the rest of the film is just Abraham convincing Frank (and the audience).

The first half tracks Abraham’s initial encounters with Hulce, who comes to Vienna as an unhappy upstart wunderkind who wants to drink, bed, wed, and write great music. Abraham’s boss, the Emperor—Jeffrey Jones (who’s really good; shame he’s an actual monster in real life)—takes on Hulce over the objections of his musical advisers, Charles Kay, and Patrick Hines. Lots of Amadeus is Kay and Hines acting like old fuddy-duddies while Hulce increases the artistic potential of opera; Abraham watches from the sidelines, manipulating all he can, simultaneously hating and envying Hulce.

The second half is all about Hulce’s financial and personal fizzling as he attempts greater and greater compositions. Elizabeth Berridge plays Hulce’s wife, and the film tracks their adorable, if problematic, courtship. Things come to a head for the couple when Roy Dotrice, as Hulce’s father (who trained him to be the great musician), comes to live with them. Dotrice is either miscast or the part is wrong; Hulce is both devoted and terrified of disappointing his father, except Dotrice and Hulce are utterly flat together. There’s no indication Dotrice is impressed with Hulce’s compositions; he is just displeased with Hulce’s extravagant lifestyle in general and Berridge in particular.

Given the whole second half is about Abraham exploiting Hulce’s relationship with Dotrice to slowly drive Hulce mad… it’d help if Dotrice were better. His portrait does more heavy lifting than Dotrice ends up doing acting.

While the first half has Abraham eventually inserting himself into Hulce’s life through Berridge at one point, in the second half, he’s mostly distant. He’s gifted Hulce and Berridge a maid (an excellent Cynthia Nixon), and Nixon reports back to Abraham, which gives the film the narrative excuse for Abraham acting on information he can’t know, but it’s dramatically inert.

Then Abraham finds himself forced to assist Hulce in his creative process, and Amadeus, pardon the expression, truly sings. The film finally gets Abraham and Hulce, who it’s been juxtaposing since jump, together on screen, and it’s magic.

Then the film punts it for the finish.

While Abraham’s great, Hulce is better. Neither exactly gets to verbalize what’s going on with their characters, with Abraham’s narrations all about intentionally wronging God and snuffing out one of His brightest angels, and Hulce unable to verbalize what he’s going through. It comes out in the music.

Besides Dotrice, the acting is universally outstanding. Berridge is sympathetic and adorable. Simon Callow shows up as the working-class musical theater owner who convinces Hulce to try to write for the people instead of the royalty. He’s good.

Technically, the standout is Michael Chandler and Nena Danevic’s editing. Absolutely superb cutting, whether toggling from present to past, staged opera to dramatics, whatever they’re cutting, Chandler and Danevic do a marvelous job. Forman’s direction is good but better in terms of directing the actors than the composition. Forman and cinematographer Miroslav Ondrícek do a fine job, and there are some excellent sequences (mostly involving Hulce in his descent); the cutting is always what makes them so special.

Amadeus is often breathtaking, beautiful work, with Hulce, Abraham, and those editors particularly excelling.

Without a Clue (1988, Thom E. Eberhardt)

Without a Clue has an amusing premise–what if Sherlock Holmes is a buffoon and Dr. Watson is the genius–and generally succeeds in executing it. Director Eberhardt brings very little to the film (one wonders if his single goal was keeping Michael Caine in the center of each frame), but the production is handsomely enough mounted, even if there is a lack of scope. Most of the film’s action takes place indoors, where Eberhardt goes for cheap laughs. Outdoors, at least, Alan Hume’s cinematography gets to breath.

Caine is hilarious as Holmes, but he’s nothing compared to Ben Kingsley as Watson. Kingsley brings intelligence, suffering and sympathy to the role, while still maintaining a commanding lead presence. Unfortunately–except for Peter Cook in a bit part and Nigel Davenport in a slightly bigger one–the rest of the cast has little to offer.

That problem is two fold. The script gives the supporting players, except Pat Keen, almost nothing to do. Watching third-billed Jeffrey Jones run about is painful, especially since his comic scenes are so poorly written and Jones loses his forced accent explicitly during his comic scenes. Lysette Anthony is mostly useless as the damsel in distress, though she does some quality; it seems Clue failed her.

Henry Mancini’s score is a lot of fun for the period; Mancini excels at the comedy scenes. He doesn’t do so well for the action-packed finale, but neither does Eberhardt so no foul.

Clue‘s a lot of fun.

2/4 ★★

CREDITS

Directed by Thom E. Eberhardt; written by Gary Murphy and Larry Strawther, based on characters created by Arthur Conan Doyle; director of photography, Alan Hume; edited by Peter Tanner; music by Henry Mancini; production designer, Brian Ackland-Snow; produced by Marc Stirdivant; released by Orion Pictures.

Starring Michael Caine (Sherlock Holmes), Ben Kingsley (Dr. John Watson), Jeffrey Jones (Inspector Lestrade), Lysette Anthony (Leslie Giles), Paul Freeman (Professor James Moriarty), Nigel Davenport (Lord Smithwick), Pat Keen (Mrs. Hudson), Peter Cook (Norman Greenhough), Tim Killick (Sebastian Moran) and Matthew Savage (Wiggins).


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OTHER FILMS DIRECTED BY THOM E. EBERHARDT
OTHER 1988 RELEASES

Sleepy Hollow (1999, Tim Burton)

For the majority of the running time, at least Sleepy Hollow isn’t boring. Burton gets in an event every ten minutes, which keeps it moving. It often gets really stupid and watching Johnny Depp’s histrionics get tiresome after the first five minutes, but at least it moves. Until the finale, which drags incredibly. Since the film is constructed as a mystery, once the villain’s identity is revealed, it becomes a lot less interesting. Burton could have done something better, but not much in Sleepy Hollow suggests he cares enough to bother.

Besides the supporting cast and the production design—and Emmanuel Lubezki’s photography, which is lovely—there’s nothing special about the film. For a lot of it, Depp is running around with costars Christina Ricci and Marc Pickering, looking like their babysitter. Ricci’s playing the love interest though, which would come off as odd if Depp was for one moment trying to create a believable character. Watching him primp around—his facial expressions could power a small town alone—is mind-numbing.

But the supporting cast features some excellent performances—Michael Gough, Ian McDiarmid and Richard Griffiths are all wonderful. Michael Gambon doesn’t do well though, neither does Jeffrey Jones. Miranda Richardson has some good moments and some awful ones.

The script’s stupid, but it’s unclear if any of the problems are Burton’s fault. His sensibilities—besides the production itself—are reined in. He even rips off a moment from Total Recall.

It’s a lame, worthless movie… but not intolerable.

Howard the Duck (1986, Willard Huyck)

It’d be interesting to know how much of the relationship between Howard and Lea Thompson got toned down, like if Huyck and Katz originally had them more visibly romantically involved. It wouldn’t be interesting to see cut scenes or even to read old drafts of the script, it’d just be interesting to know. Seeing cut scenes or reading the script would require one to endure more of this intolerable production.

Howard the Duck has absolutely nothing to recommend it. Casting Richard Kiley as the Voice of the Cosmos aside, it’s worthless. All I could think, as the terribly acted Duck got to Earth and met Thompson was–these people wrote American Graffiti. The duck planet scenes at the beginning, which should have been amusing and inventive is more instead tired. There’s no exuberance to the scenes, they’re mundane. As a director, Huyck is never willing to acknowledge Howard the Duck‘s idiocy. It’s about a talking duck who gets it on with a human girl. It ought to be dumb, fun and outlandish–and aware of it. Instead, it’s all about not selling out the music for the man. It’s embarrassing to watch it, much less to imagine having participated in its making in any capacity.

I’m not real familiar with the comic books, but the movie Howard is a unfunny whiner who’s mad he had to get a job. I can only figure the comic book Howard is probably a funny whiner. The occasional promises of a smoking and drinking duck are never realized (he gets whisked to Earth before he lights his cigar and his beer later magically disappears into PG-land). Sadly, Howard the Duck probably isn’t even the worst of the atrocious teen-minded sci-fi movies on the mid-1980s, just the most famous.

The acting is unspeakable. Lea Thompson has never been really good so her inability to act opposite a guy in a costume who talks (the cast of “Alf” did far better) is no surprise. But Tim Robbins? Robbins is awful. Jeffrey Jones is awful. Some of the blame has to fall on the script and direction, but good acting might have made it a little less unbearable.

As for the costumed Howard the Duck… the costume’s not detailed enough to be convincing in regular shots. It looks like a television commercial. And Chip Zien’s vocal performance as Howard might be the worst thing in the movie, which is a hard thing to be.

The only other thing worth commenting on is John Barry’s score. When I saw his name in the opening titles, I figured at least the music would be good. It isn’t. It’s John Barry trying to be zany. It’s a metaphor for the whole movie–a bunch of squares pretending to be zany and not even managing to make an unconventional failure.