Lovingly crafted, musical, emotional drama

Rating: 8/10 (26 November 2013)

F. Murray Abraham and Thomas Hulce star as Antonio Salieri and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, respectively, in this lavish period piece. I say "lavish" because among the film's greatest strengths is its visual style, including the sets, the costumes and the cinematography.
The film is a slow-burning drama that focuses on character emotion and its connection with the music of the composers in the film. We are always peering deep into the souls of Salieri and Mozart as they live with their passion for music. Salieri is particularly fascinating because of his deep admiration, hatred and jealousy of Mozart all at once; he speaks of his music with great reverence, yet bears a deep grudge against God for making the composer of such music a man as arrogant and childish as Mozart, though Salieri himself needs to look in the mirror.
The music is integrated beautifully with the film, either as simply its score, or to correspond with a character reading or imagining certain musical pieces. It's a consistently beautiful film, but it can drag on when it takes its time with a scene; the drama isn't tense so much as it is in a constant state of rising and falling emotion, much like the music itself.
It's a very good film, but if I had to, I'd say that watching it must be similar to going to the opera, an activity that I can only speculate upon, since I've never been; kind of boring, but beautiful and meaningful all the same.