Educational Media Reviews Online

Mozartballs are Salzburgian chocolate/marzipan/secret-ingredient confections wrapped in gold foil and packed by hand so that Mozart’s portrait as printed on the wrapping always faces up in the box. Some have even been consumed in outer space. These, and many other quasi-Mozart-related facts are unveiled in this confectionary documentary produced and directed by the ever inventive Larry Weinstein, whose touch insures that the editing and technical quality of the program are superb.

Mozart himself is best represented when bits of his music are played in the background. Mozart’s music is not the point, however. The psychological impact of Mozart’s life and music on specific contemporary people is. Marzipan is made from nuts. What we see in this program are ‘Mozart nuts,’ including tourists to Salzburg who support the makers of Mozartkugeln. We keep enjoyable company with four individuals: a retired Swiss man whose depression was cured by visits to Mozart’s grave and who now proclaims himself a Mozart lunatic (and thinks the world needs more like him), an Oklahoma woman who nearly died but was spiritually recaptured by Mozart’s soul and found true love at last in the form of another Oklahoman who believes she is a reborn version of one of Wolfie’s favorite sopranos; a well-respected composer (David Cope) who works with algorithms and programs his computer to write a Mozart-style piece for cello and orchestra that is played for the film (with performers in concert dress; at one point, the cellist good-naturedly opines that Mozart would rather have been poisoned by Salieri than have this piece attributed to him); and an Austrian scientist/amateur pianist who packed a Mozart score and Mozartballs in his astronaut-experience luggage.

Made as an ‘antidote’ to ‘serious’ celebrations of Mozart (who needs such a thing? Any sincere commemoration of Mozart would have to be fundamentally joyous), this frothy documentary has no place in academic libraries except those collecting all Weinstein efforts and those needing comic-relief videos for psychology majors. It might circulate in public libraries, but patron response could be, “They’ll make a documentary about anything.” It is spun-sugar fun, the sort of thing one could see on TV and say, “good show,” and then forget it. Woo-woo alert: the reborn Oklahoman souls are shown recognizing the spot in Salzburg where their eighteenth-century embodiments bid each other goodbye. The women are frankly identified as lesbian partners and they demonstrate their deep affection for each other, gratefully so in Salzburg, where nobody cares if they hold hands on the street.