A stout and plain German house cleaner and a Moroccan auto worker (twenty years her junior) fall in love after one night. A few days later they get married. We watch their expressionless interactions and listen to their broken-down German conversations around the dinner table. Each shot is long and drawn out, nearly ironic in its purposeful mundanity. Depth is used to its fullest extent, pushing the characters into a distant corner of the frame, usually obstructed by elements in…

Milos Forman’s 1984 masterpiece, Amadeus, meaning “the love of God,” is a timeless depiction of superhuman talent through the lens of mediocrity. As a boy, Antonio Salieri (played by F. Murray Abraham) prayed to God to let him be a composer and to let his music immortalize him. Salieri believes his prayers are answered when he eventually becomes the recognized Court Composer of Vienna. However, Salieri questions his “God-given” talent upon meeting Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (played by Tom Hulce). The…