Mozart and... not Salieri! The guest of MIFF-38 Spanish director Carlos Soare, who received the prize of the festival “For outstanding contribution to world cinema”, ordered to open the retrospective of his films with the film “I, Don Juan” (2009). An interesting choice, given that in recent years, Soare has been filming almost exclusively documentary films. Apparently, the whole thing is in the hidden resentment of the 84-year-old director - the film did not win awards and attention of the public (just one orphan review on Kinopoisk!), disappointed the producers and did not lay in the mass consciousness: ask a dozen moviegoers to name a film about Mozart and Salieri, and for sure they will all call Amadeus by Milos Forman.
Why did that happen? Let’s start with the conflict: in Amadeus, Mozart and Salieri are opposed, talent and envy of talent, creativity and craftsmanship. “I, Don Juan” leaves this rivalry almost behind the scenes, bringing to the main stage a completely different character – the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte – a free-thinking young man, rebelling against prudish morality in the most innocuous way – his poems. Being expelled from Venice to Vienna, not without the help of his senior mentor Casanova (yes, that one!), he gets acquainted with Mozart, and creates with him the opera Don Juan.
Making the main character of the film not Mozart, not Salieri, and not even Casanova (that’s where you could walk), but the librettist Da Ponte is a rather bold act, nevertheless, quite accurately reflecting that very “other” conflict. Each of the characters in the film (with the possible exception of Salieri) could say of themselves, “I am Don Juan.” All of them, in one way or another, confront their environment, challenge society: Da Ponte - free-thinking poems, Mozart - playful themes of his operas, Casanova ... well, everything is clear with him. And each of them decides where to stay - settle down, sit down, join the general flow ... or not. Each of them has their own path and their own path. Casanova lives a strange hermit. Mozart dies in his prime. And only Da Ponte lives a long life (including an off-screen life in America). With the fate of their hero Don Juan, they play, as if trying on themselves. What happens to the character, as if the fate of the characters depends - either in hell or in humble everyday life. And this existence on the verge of fiction and reality in Soire is depicted simply ingeniously – not only in a plot image, but also visually, when fictional fragments seem to be wedged into “real scenes”. Opera intervenes in real life, and it is no longer clear where the reality and cardboard scenery. This balancing on the edge of reality is what interests Soire more than Mozart’s skirmishes with Salieri or Casanova’s number of mistresses (Two hundred?). Three hundred? Let it be one thousand and three!
The actors perform their roles perfectly, especially since they are virtually unknown outside of Italian or Austrian cinema. Lorenzo Balducci plays Da Ponte with stingy, but accurate strokes - his hero does not yet know where his place is: in the "abyss of sin" Casanova or in humble repentance - after all, even his name he received from the priest at baptism. Acquaintance with Mozart gives him the opportunity to try to rush “into the abyss” in an allegorical, operatic version, and Balducci accurately depicts the inner struggle of the hero who can not decide what I want myself. Mozart plays Lino Guanchale, and he is quite comparable to the genius Tom Halsey in “Amadeus” – despite the fact that theatrical actor Guanchale is the first work in cinema! His Mozart is not as tragic as Halsey’s, but certainly quirky, barefoot and lively. Tobias Moretti, who plays Casanova, copes with his canonical character with just one eyebrow movement - no wonder in the same 2009 film version of Treasure Island, he played the pirate Silver! Such a powerful and dark charisma to look for!
The musical part of the film is impeccable - however, with such a libretto it would be difficult to expect anything else. But it is still clear what the audience lacked - drama and sharpness. After all, the hypothetical conflict of Mozart and Salieri is much more cinematic than the restless soul of the librettist Da Ponte, who chooses between recklessness and sedation, and got into the borderline world of opera conventions. But if you are interested to get behind the scenes of the Viennese theater and see, “from what rubbish” brilliant musical works are born – then “I, Don Juan”, of course, is a must-see.