Amadeus

"Amadeus" is a great film that is deep, thought-provoking, and overall exceptional. The film deals with the last few months of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's (Oscar-nominee Tom Hulce) life, told in flashbacks by an old, washed-up musician named Antonio Salieri (Oscar-winner F. Murray Abraham). Salieri tells of the genius, the ingenuity, and the insanity of the young musician who died mysteriously at the age of 35. Salieri's jealousy may have led him to kill the young composer, but that is something that will never be known. "Amadeus" is an interesting commentary that tries to fill holes in history and succeeds amazingly. By mixing fact and probable fiction, the film-makers succeeded in creating a truly remarkable motion picture that is easily one of the best of the 1980s. 5 stars out of 5.

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.

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.

The unseen star of this film is the Academy of St Martin's in the Field, London. Buy the soundtrack and you will be rewarded with some of the most stunning music you can hear. Mozart's music excells with brilliant treatment and dies with a bad performance. And that, after all, is what the film is about. Without his music, Mozart would be lost in time, a fate that the narrator of the story, the composer Salieri, saw as his own. Ironically, while Salieri has indeed been completely overshadowed by Mozart, his music still survives and has its followers.

But beyond the music this is an outstanding film. Set in the prettiest and most flamboyant century of the last millennium, it is visually stunning and the writer's portrayal of jealousy is perceptive. The casting of the Austrian King and courtiers, (indeed all the actors in this film) that Mozart needed to impress capture the gentility and courtesy of the time, and also subtly shows their growing indignation and impatience at Mozart's personality and behaviour; the presentation of Mozart as punk musician is probably the only failing in the film. As a theatrical device to show that genius can come in disastrous packages it succeeds well, but anyone with any historic sense of social ettiquette or manners will know that Mozart's sill y behaviour would be well wide of the truth, as might, perhaps, be the concept of Salieri as murderer-in-chief. Only in the final scenes is Mozart's brilliance as a composer truly explored in what amounts to a deconstruction of his final composition - his moving, uncompleted and poignant Requiem mass.

Another unintended star in this film are the candle lit sets and theatres of the 18th Century; their operas and drama ooze a magic that is lacking in the present world and which modern producers might well try to reintroduce; so lovely are these buildings with their flickering lights and theatrical techniques that one is left desperate to to seek out these rare theatres to experience them.

This film leaves one breathless from its visual beauty, its magnificent score and the choreography, indeed, of the two together. Mozart's life had the air of tragedy, and his undoubted genius speaks to us now and forever. This film is a monument to the skills of the writer, maker, performers and, of course, Mozart's music. If you have not yet done so, see it.