Great story but a tragic look at society's treatment of true genius.

Rating: 10/10 (30 September 1999)

I love this movie and watch it every few months. It is awesome and must be viewed with surround sound for the full effect.
The story is compelling in the way it is told from Salieri's point of view. Salieri is an adequate composer in Vienna held in high position in the court of Emporer Joseph(Jeffrey Jones). But when Mozart arrives from Salzburg, suddenly Salieri feels threatened. Right away Salieri's image of what Mozart might be like is blown- seeing him "rolling on the floor" playing a childlike sex game with his future wife, Constanze. Mozart inadvertently insults Salieri at a meeting with the emperor and all the court composers so from that point on Salieri is driven to revenge by jealousy and envy of his talent, which he hails, "music already finished in his head, as if he were taking dictation. Then I knew, this was no performing monkey, this was the voice of God, coming through this infantile buffoon of a man". (These quotes are not exactly verbatim, but you get the jist of it). This a well spent 158 minutes. Although this is not an actual biography on Mozart, which was not the intention of Peter Schaffer or Milos Forman. The point that I derived from this film is the fact that society never appreciates true genius while they are in the present. Mediocrity will be hailed in the present, but the true genius will be shunned (and you can see that fact true to this day). That point is driven home as "Amadeus" comes to a close when you see Salieri being wheeled into the mental hospital claiming to be the patron saint of mediocrity while in the background, you hear Mozart's giggle, having the last laugh at all his rivals, in that his music will live on forever. I feel that not only did F. Murray Abraham deserve the Best Actor Award by the Academy, I wish that Tom Hulce could have gotten it also. It should have been impossible to exclude one, both performances played off each other perfectly.