Amadeus

I thought that it would be impossible to make a movie like this one! Peter Schaffer's original play inspired Milos Forman, the great czech film maker, that surprised the world with "One flew over the cuckoo's nest" (1975). The sublime, almost over-human performance by Frank Murray Abraham (the Mozart enemy and secret admirer, Salieri) is one of the keys for the movie success, mostly to it's depth. The perfect sense of timing by Milos Forman is admirable, he knows when to play wich music. All the scenarios: opera houses, palaces, streets, etc., are details absolutely harmonious! One of this classic secret was that Forman gathered "the" team, perfect team work.

We can just admire it, laugh, cry, reflect, most of all, listen to it. See it, it's 10/10.

Thank you Mr. Forman...

When the two worlds of Antonio Salieri and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart collide in Milos Forman's Amadeus, it is anything but a symphony. As the court composer of the Emperor of Austria, all Salieri desires are fame and recognition as a composer; it is all he had wanted his whole life. When he learns that Mozart, whose name he had known as long as he can remember, is going to come to the court to play, Salieri cannot wait to meet the outstanding and righteous man that he knows he must be. However, when Salieri learns that Mozart is a young, crude, and unrefined young man, endowed with all the talent and ability that he ever wanted and strived for, it plants a seed of jealousy that soon grows into bitter resentment and hatred, not only for Mozart, but also towards God. Salieri's desire to get rid of him is seemingly boundless as he plots and schemes for Mozart's demise. It is no wonder why Amadeus won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, with 5-Star performances by F. Murry Abraham as Antonio Salieri and Tom Hulce as Mozart. Amadeus is an emotionally charged and tragic piece, a story of the life of one of the world's most famous composers, as seen through the eyes of his worst enemy.

I remember as a child, my sister told me to watch this film. That it was the best film she ever saw. I didn't watch it until I turned 10; finally I sat myself down and watched it. I fell in love with it.

Based on the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, played a terrific and hilarious performance by Tom Hulce. This also has the life of Antonio Salieri, a great and well deserved Oscar winning performance by F. Murray Abraham. Despite the story not being accurate, come on! This is a great movie that was a gigantic Oscar waiting to happen. Congrats to Amaudeus for bringing the beauty of classical music into out living rooms.

The story is that we start off with an older and more suicidal Salieri who blames himself for Mozart's death. When a priest comes to ask Salieri to plead forgiveness to the lord and wants to council him, Salieri describes who he was and how music inspired his life, he plays a few notes from his opera's that were masterpieces, the priest just looks at him not knowing the music. Salieri just looks at him with a smile and says "Ah, how about...?", he plays Mozart's most famous work and the priest gets excited saying "Oh, how charming! I'm sorry, I didn't know you wrote that!" smiling and knowing how it will please Salieri, Salieri just looks at him with a emotionless face "I didn't. That was Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart" and you see the priest's embarrassment. Just great and a perfectly played out performance by Abraham and Frank.

Tom Hulce gives Mozart this crazy and annoying yet nevertheless funny laugh that you can't help but laugh at it every time he does it. He brings such life to Mozart and an immaturity that I think some of us can relate too in being spoiled and always knowing you're the best at your talent. He marries Constanze played by Elizabeth Berridge and she does it remarkably well. Constanze is obviously the more mature one and is the only woman who can try to tame Mozart's crazy ways. When Salieri gets a little jealous that the emperor played by an under rated Jeffrey Jones, since he is the emperor's tutor, then the emperor demands more of Mozart and his music. Salieri vs. Mozart: on the next celebrity death match!

"Amadeus" is a fantastic movie that anyone could easily love and enjoy. It's definitely a must see for movie fans and anyone in general who is just looking for a good movie. This was the best picture of 1984 and it's well deserved, just trust me and the awesome reviews it's getting!

10/10

At the tender age of 26, when I still thought no film was complete without a car chase and a big explosion, Amadeus had me hooked. I went to see it multiple times back in 1984 during its initial release, back when the theater was empty whenever it played and before it was nominated by the Academy.

This film is an unusual biography, and I often like to compare it with Ed Wood, since both Ed Wood and Salieri were men who gave everything they had to their respective crafts and came up short. Salieri, a contemporary of Mozart, has only one dream - to be a great composer. Predating the prosperity gospel by about two hundred years, Salieri mistakes obsessing with God over his own earthly desires with actual godliness, even being happy when his father - who objects to Salieri's musical interests - chokes to death and leaves Salieri free to pursue his musical dreams. He chalks this up to God's will for his career. Problems begin when Salieri meets a twenty-something Mozart at the court of the Emperor in Vienna, where Salieri is the court composer. Mozart is everything Salieri is not - profane, forward, and a great composer. Salieri starts down the road to insanity as he realizes the childish Mozart has all of the gifts he ever wanted and has been denied. However, Salieri is not an outright failure as was Ed Wood. In many ways he is something worse than a ridiculous failure - he is mediocre, and worse yet, he knows it.

Salieri,angry at God for honoring a profane ungrateful boy like Mozart while ignoring his own one desire to be a great composer, swears to destroy Mozart. The strange thing is, as long as Mozart is alive, Salieri is the honored composer, not Mozart, though this just seems to infuriate Salieri even more. Salieri seems to be the only person in Vienna who recognizes Mozart's talent. This just begs the question - why did it never occur to Salieri that being able to recognize something as valuable before anyone else does is a talent in and of itself? After all, in 1975 the second best thing to being Bill Gates would have been to have recognized his genius and invested heavily in his success. But I digress.

The cinematography and art direction on this film are outstanding. The visuals start out light and festive, matching Mozart's mood and prospects. As poverty, illness, and the guilt of his father's death close in on Mozart during the second half of the film, the mood and visuals become very dark to match what is happening in Mozart's own life. Highly recommended.

"Amadeus", while historically inaccurate in numerous ways, is a brilliant film. Its central character is not a man but an attribute of man at his most remarkable: genius. Mozart's genius was at the highest level, on par with Shakespeare, Michelangelo and Balanchine. Forman knew this when he undertook translating Peter Shaffer's play. Although most of the acting is on a very high plane, the actors themselves are not top tier, not should they be. A famous, easily recognizable actor would have detracted from the central thesis that genius is greater than the one on whom it has been entrusted. Mozart was, of course, deeper than the character shown in the movie, but no personal life could equal the extent and depth of the musical genius that flowed from this little man. The letters he sent to his father show a remarkable sensitivity and depth of understanding. However, they are not paradigms of literary greatness. The immense contribution of W. A. Mozart lay in some of the most sublime music ever written. Fortunately, the film gave us snippets of some of the real gems in the Mozart canon: the great C Minor Mass, the Requiem and "Don Giovanni". Forman realized that no human being will ever be great enough or have the background to pen such masterpieces without intervention from elsewhere. This is certainly true of Shakespeare as well. So what we have here, ultimately, is a celebration of genius, that great gift to mankind that nearly always proves to be too much for the person who is chosen to manifest it to the rest of us. Many thanks to Milos Forman for the wisdom to keep out of the way and allow genius to shine through. In that sense, "Amadeus" is an exercise in humility. Few films come across as blessings for those who experience them. "Amadeus" is one such film.