Amadeus Gets My Vote for the Best Movie of all Time

Rating: 10/10 (5 January 2017)

It's been a few years since I've seen the film but that is unimportant as I know it like the back of my hand as I do the life and music of Mozart. The movie came first, however. The first piece that I ever played on the piano was the andante middle movement of Mozart's first piano sonata, a piece that doesn't feature in the film but the movie drove me out of my status as a musical dilettante and into the ranks of musicians—granted, a crappy musician but a musician nonetheless. I wonder how many other viewers were so heavily influenced my Amadeus.
As good as the performances are in Amadeus (and they are all superb) the real star is the music of Mozart. For many people I am quite certain that the movie was their introduction to the greatest composer who has ever handed down music. It isn't the music alone that makes this joining of music and film so successful but the way in which we are presented with the music, the way Milos Forman deconstructs Mozart's genius for the benefit of those of us without the benefit of a lifetime of musical training. This is especially highlighted in the scene in which Salieri views the young composer's work as he reads it on the music stand (K 361 Gran Partita).
"He's taking the conventions but slightly rearranging them to produce an effect of surprise but he's not rearranging them to such an extreme extent that he loses contact with his audience and this is really, absolutely at the essence of Mozart." This is an unattributed quote from a documentary on the composer which wonderfully describes his music in a single sentence. Amadeus is two hours and 40 minutes but it also precisely defines just what it is about Mozart that made him exactly what he was, is, has become, and will always be for everyone who appreciates music.