Best of class, and worthy

Rating: 10/10 (22 February 2011)

It should be noted that the playwright Peter Shaffer titled Amadeus a "fantasy". In fact, it is just that. It becomes a Man vs. God morality play, where in order to make the dialectic work, Salieri must be portrayed as an admirable person, and Mozart as a cretin, albeit a genius. That is the fantasy. Nothing we know about either Salieri or Mozart supports such characterizations, other than Mozart's undeniable genius. In fact, once past his striking normality (so much for the theory that madness and genius always walkhand-in-hand), we know that Mozart was a clear eyed judge of musical worth, and one of the best friends one could ever have). Moreover, we know this: Mozart was probably the greatest musical genius that ever lived, and Salieri was a routine 18th Century musician chiefly known through Pushkin's play and Rimsky-Korsakov's opera as the man who poisoned Mozart (a contention generally dismissed as false).
That said, this is the finest film of its genre ever produced. Get past the characterizations, and focus on the events, as they are mostly faithful to the truth, and thus lend an essentially worthy character to the film. Those familiar with the circumstances surrounding Mozart's death, for example, and more significantly his funeral and burial, will find their treatment in this film almost supernaturally accurate. Milos Forman was either a true Mozartean, or else he really did his homework. In this film, it is as it was.
The fantasy is worthy and well done, but it is essentially faux. The events depicted, however, are mostly dead-on, and they reveal not only a fascinating and compelling portrait of the age of the Viennese Enlightenment, but also the stunning appearance on that scene of the man that Goethe believed to be the greatest genius that has ever lived. It is almost uncanny how this movie captures the flavor of life in the musical firmament that traces its global humanist phenomenology to Mozart, the first free-lance composer that ever lived.
But at its soul, this film is gorgeous, and magnificently captures the astonishing, unmatchable glory and humanity of the music of Mozart, which has done more to elevate the spirit of those who hear it than the works of any other man that ever lived.