Amadeus - Directors Cut - BD
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Warner Brothers / 1984 / 180 Minutes / R / Street Date: February 10, 2009
 This 1984 film adaptation of Peter Shaffer’s 1979 stage play won no less than eight Academy Awards including Best Picture, Actor, Director, and Screenplay adaptation. In this instance, even proud independent film enthusiasts who are generally distrustful of the Oscars calling the shots tend to whole-heartedly agree; Amadeus is a masterpiece of filmmaking. The story is loosely constructed around the historical figure of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (played brilliantly by Tom Hulce) but the particulars of the story make no attempt to reflect an accurate account of the composer’s life. Rather, the real energy of the story centers around the life, ambitions, and regrets of rival composer Antonio Salieri (impressively played by F. Murray Abraham) who finds himself consumed with jealousy for Mozart’s effortless musical gift and ultimately allows his growing obsession to pollute his perspective of himself and drive him to self destruction. The story unfolds like a gentle bloom; slowly evolving from an inconspicuous bud into a fully developed flower with powerful impact.
The story is utterly human and at the same time spiritually inspired. The friction between passion-driven desire and elevated, honor-bound aspirations forms the essence of Salieri’s quest. The tragedy of how personal perspective can be so corrupted by embracing jealousy’s temptation is so poignant that at times it’s almost painful to watch. Salieri’s life accomplishments and impressive list of musical skills are invisible to his own eyes; his self esteem can only be measured by comparing himself to his imagined scope of Mozart’s genius. Salieri speaks to the untenable “mediocrity” of his own ability, when even his deft ability to comprehend the sublime mechanics of Mozart’s compositions would be out of reach of all but the most talented of musical minds. Salieri’s incessant battle with “God’s will” demonstrates how the human ego manages sees truth the way that conforms to its own point of view regardless of the facts.
Don’t get me wrong: Warner should have provided both versions for a title like this with such a strong history and fan base. But the transgression of omitting the theatrical-version is not worth avoiding the disc for anyone who truly loves the film. If you still find yourself frustrated without the theatrical cut, I encourage you to rent the disc and then write Warner Brothers and inform them of your displeasure. Such actions do not fall on deaf ears. The Video: How Does The Disc Look? Perhaps those with smaller screens who sit relatively far away from their HD monitors (greater than three screen widths away) won’t notice anything objectionable. But any enthusiast doing their duty by creating a “theater” viewing angle of between 1 and 1.75 screen-widths away from their 1080p system will be sadly dismayed by the VC-1 compressed 2.40:1 picture on this dual-layer Blu-ray Disc. The big nasty here is simple to spot: serious DNR (digital noise reduction) has rendered the picture soft-edged, a bit blurry in distance shots, mid- and far-ground facial detail, and backgrounds, and lacking fine texture to the degree that things feel a bit plastic. Faces take on a “waxy” look that reeks of digital tinkering and looks nothing, nothing like film, though I’m sure that reviewers watching from too far away from HD monitors that are too small will praise the “clean” picture that’s certainly noise-free. Wasn’t this the film that walked away with eight Academy Awards? The film that millions of fans know and love and have been waiting to spend any amount to procure in transparent 1080p? Warner Brothers, what happened? The well trusted film restoration expert, Robert A. Harris, had this to say in this discussion thread at HomeTheaterForum: “Somewhere between the film element and the Blu-ray this particular Amadeus has been turned to something odd and Patton-esque*. Not necessarily soft, certainly clean, but with virtually no feel of film or cinema whatsoever, this Amadeus is an unwelcome surprise.” [* editors note: Fox’s release of Patton on Blu-ray suffers from similar over-processed filtering] The solution to achieve a proper high-definition image is not a mystery, and surprisingly it’s not even difficult. Mr. Harris sums it up nicely by stating: “Perfection is easily attained. Scan the film. Don't make changes.” That’s destined to become one of my new favorite phrases. Expect to see that one again. I’m waiting to get confirmation, but I suspect that folks at Warner didn’t actually have the rights to perform the film-scan themselves and were instead beholding to the 1080p master that they were provided. However, with so many deserving and properly mastered titles waiting for BD50 replication lines, one wonders why the Amadeus release couldn’t have been postponed which would have allowed other projects (making proper use of 1080p fidelity) to move ahead while Warner could have worked to procure a better master or, better yet, obtain a print, IP, or negative to perform a new film-scan. After such a ranting, those of you who haven’t already canceled your order should allow me to fairly state that the DNR is the only problem with the picture with the exception of a few rare and relatively benign moments of edge-ringing. Colors are gorgeous. Black level is solid though perhaps not as deep as could be, but this could very well be reflective of the film material. And allow me to stress plainly that this Blu-ray Disc picture is clearly better than the image from the most recent DVD (which was the best image available on home-video prior to this Blu-ray Disc release). In other words anyone who can tolerate the DVD image will enjoy the superior Blu-ray image even more in absolute terms, especially with the lack of compression noise and much more stable backgrounds during camera pans. However, the promise of Blu-ray Disc is not just “better than DVD”; it should be “faithful to the film”. Warner’s release of Amadeus on Blu-ray Disc is certainly the former, but certainly not the latter. The Audio: How Does The Disc Sound? Unlike the visual let-down, the lossless audio track of the Blu-ray Disc does a fantastic job faithfully replicating the multi-track sound master. The countless hours I played the soprano’s “Diva Scene” on laserdisc for guests are finally surpassed after a decade of tolerating the anemic over-compressed Dolby Digital on DVD. The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track opens up with microscopic detail, loads of acoustic decay and atmospheric cues, and a smooth, effortless top-end. The original recording lacks the extension of some more modern tracks especially in regards to the “ADR” sounding dubbed dialogue during many scenes. But the musical moments in Amadeus taken on a 3-dimensional and dynamic character that transforms the film into a deluge for the senses. These immersive musical interludes clash starkly with the relatively flat and centered dialogue-driven story, and this contrast is there by design: it’s almost as if you bounce from B&W to color, or from 2- to 3-D. The effect is powerful and really creates an emotional pull that is positively goose-bump city and allows the music to become its own character in the film. Warner also provides standard lossy-compressed Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks in English (the companion legacy track for all TrueHD streams on BD), French, Spanish, German, and Italian. A quick swap between the lossy and lossless English track should leave no room for doubt of which is better for those with full-decoding capability. Warner also provides a thorough choice of subtitle options which includes the standard English, Spanish, and French along side Portuguese, Korean, Italian, German, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Polish, Danish, and Swedish. The Supplements: What Goodies Are There? The packaging should be mentioned as a bonus feature as it contains a gorgeous 36-page booklet with the front and back cover housing the hubs to hold two discs. The film and bonus features are on a single dual-layer BD, and the second disc in the back cover is a music CD featuring 8 items from the film’s soundtrack. My complaint is that the insert with the track information for the music CD is loose and easily falls out of the otherwise nicely-bound booklet. Other than that, the rest of the bonus material exactly match that of the more recent Director’s Cut DVD edition including the standard-definition resolution. We get the same audio commentary with director Milos Forman and writer Peter Shaffer which delves into the expected thoughts about casting, story, filming etc. However, I would have preferred that more of the commentary focus on screen-specific items, especially during the newly inserted scenes for the Director’s edition. The real gem of the bonus material is the hour long (standard def) documentary which goes into unfathomable detail about filming, production, casting and is a must-view for anyone even remotely a fan of the film. Did you know that the actor who plays the character of Mozart learned to play the piano for the movie? Lots of good stuff here, good enough to watch this one with a group of friends who all are professed Amadeus fans. We also get a trailer and a DVD-ROM with digital copy for those who feel compelled to watch Amadeus on a 2-inch screen. Amid the room for the host of language options provided, it would have been nice to have had the isolated musical score that accompanied the original flipper-DVD from 1997. Alas, maybe the next Blu-ray Disc release… Final Thoughts An incredible movie gets a sub-par high-def transfer on this Blu-ray Disc. It looks better than your DVD, but not nearly as close to the film original as it should for a 1080p transfer. The lossless audio, however, is a revelation in comparison to the former DVD though it reveals the limitations of the recording techniques, and bonus features don’t drop anything from the previous DVD edition, and add a bonus music CD in addition to digital copy. If it wasn’t for the waxy, over-processed image, this Blu-ray Disc would have received my unbridled recommendation. As it stands I suggest that anyone wanting the best available home-video picture and sound consider a cautious upgrade from the DVD edition on your shelf. And whether or not you decide to ride this one out in the hopes of an improved Blu-ray Edition in the future, do the film and all of its fans a favor and let Warner know you’d like them to revisit this title and give it the transparent 1080p image quality it deserves.
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I first experienced Amadeus as an adolescent, and so it forms the base of important films that influenced me during my formative teen years which led me in my college days to eagerly procure the outrageously priced box set which I watched repeatedly on my 16x9 Proscan monitor in glorious widescreen. Of course the flipper-disc anamorphic DVD edition soon replaced the disc-swapping marathon of the laserdisc set, I couldn’t wait to obtain the remastered Director’s Cut DVD edition when it came out just a few years ago to replace its badly-compressed predecessor. However, having grown so familiar with the film that I knew and loved, I found it too difficult and jarring to try to watch the “Director’s Cut” on this new DVD, which felt something like a favorite love song that had been remixed into a dance-tune that left me frustrated and unsatisfied; I hadn’t watched any version of Amadeus from that point on until receiving this Blu-ray Disc.
Now having distanced myself from the film long enough for my memory of the original cut to begin to blur, I find I’m able to relax and enjoy the new Director’s Cut for the expanded, better developed story that it is. Why am I dragging you through my personal Amadeus therapy session? Because I’ve heard lots of other fans of the film come away with the same reaction that I originally had to the new Director’s Cut who vowed they’d never watch it and stick with their original theatrical cut instead. My hope is that those of you who are feeling frustrated that Warner saw fit only to provide the one Director’s Cut on this Blu-ray Disc edition rather than provide both to give fans the option (as New Line properly did with Dark City, as an example) will give the film a chance with its 20 added minutes of scenes. The new inclusions range from quick 10 second sound-bytes to lengthy, impressively central scenes that depict key elements of the story which paint a much richer tapestry of character development and motivation.
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