Rock Me, Amadeus

Rating: 9/10 (17 March 2008)

Milos Forman serves up a deliciously macabre film based on the Peter Schaffer play about brilliant composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and lesser composer and Mozart arch rival Antonio Salieri. This is Salieri's story much more than it is Mozart's. More than anything, the film is a study of the devouring envy one artist can have for the talents of another.
F. Murray Abraham is good as Salieri; he has never since gotten as juicy a film role as this. But he's upstaged by Tom Hulce's Mozart, played as a giggling, flamboyant showman who's absolutely oblivious to Salieri's mounting hatred. Indeed, one of the aspects of the rivalry that is most heartbreaking, and which adds fuel to Salieri's fire, is the degree to which Mozart doesn't even recognize Salieri as a rival.
Though the movie is meticulous in its period detail, the screenplay is peppered with modern, slangy American dialogue that frees it from the museum piece stuffiness that so often infects other period films.
Bravo.
Grade: A