Amadeus

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.

I'd like to point out a few facts before I review the movie. First of all, Mozart died at home surrounded by his family, pupil and a priest. Secondly, the plot of Amadeus is not exactly original. Rimsky-Korsakov wrote a short opera called "Mozart and Salieri" with the bare bones of the story and the identical characterization of the two composers, and he used Pushkin's drama for the libretto. So, the rumor that Salieri killed Mozart has been around for almost a couple of centuries though we all know there isn't an iota of veracity in it.

That being said, Peter Shaffer's movie adaptation of his own play is still an astounding achievement. Have you ever seen a movie based on your favorite book and come out of the movie theater rather disappointed though the film version faithfully followed the storyline of the book? Amadeus is definitely not one of those movies. Shaffer clearly understands the difference between stage and film; the story is more elaborate in the movie, and some of the lengthy lines are replaced with more subtle images and close-ups.

I'm often surprised to find that people don't get that Amadeus is the story of the fictionalized character, Antonio Salieri, not the real one, who adored Mozart's music but hated everything else about him. In other words, the movie viewers are seeing Mozart through Salieri's eyes. Needless to say, his view is rather slanted. If you have read Shaffer's original play, you probably remember he describes Mozart's laugh 'grating.' In the film, this annoying laugh becomes more symbolic. Though Salieri speaks in front of a Catholic priest, he is actually having a one-sided discourse with God. At one point, he declares, "One day, I will laugh at you. Before I leave this earth, I will laugh at you." But as he is wheeled out of his room by an aide at the asylum, what we hear is that screeching laugh of Mozart--or is it? It becomes obvious as we watch that this movie is called Amadeus because that's what Salieri wished to be--God's beloved.

The movie might give some viewers who don't know much about Mozart a wrong impression that he was a cad, and it gives incorrect information on some of his music (e.g.; the count in The Marriage of Figaro sings "Contessa perdono" AFTER he learns that the woman dressed in the maid's clothes is his own wife. There's no mistaken identity here. Read the title of the song--Countess, forgive me!), but these are minor offenses. Though I am a die-hard Mozart fan, I can laugh at tongue-in-cheek references to Amadeus in other movies. My favorite? In Guarding Tess, a secret service agent tells his partner, "He (Mozart)'s a jerk. One day, a guy shows up with a mask, and he drops dead."

What's not to like about Amadeus? The tale Peter Shaffer tells is gripping, the actors are first- rate, and, of course, there's music. The selection of Mozart's music in the movie is excellent; you can truly enjoy the beauty of his music no matter how much or how little you know about it. In case you are wondering, a little tune Mozart plays on his back and hands crossed as a penalty at a party is Viva Bacchus from The Abduction from the Seraglio, a duet for Pedrillo and Osmin. Pedrillo, while singing this song, is trying to get Osmin, the harem guard, drunk to help his master rescue his true love. No wonder Schikaneder calls it 'our song.' And the improvised version of Salieri's welcome march is actually a famous song, Non piu andrai farfallone amoroso, from The Marriage of Figaro.

As I said, I'm a huge Mozart fan, so my rating may be somewhat biased, but what the heck, I gladly give ten stars to Amadeus. I watched it close to a hundred times over the years, and it still gives me a great pleasure every time I see (and hear) it.

"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.

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.

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...