F. Murray Abraham is excellent

Rating: 10/10 (19 October 2006)

Amadeus is in no way the perfect Mozart/Salieri biopic. It takes tremendous liberties with the truth, but that's no matter: it's entertaining and inspiring beyond belief. Mozart's natural musical acumen which Salieri envies so much is portrayed beautifully, and I almost felt myself becoming better at appreciating the highest ideals of music through his descriptions. The scene in which Salieri and Mozart work on getting the Requiem down on paper is the highlight of this side of the film: hearing and understanding the separate layers before hearing them altogether is a goose-bumpingly great experience.
And F. Murray Abraham is an astonishing presence in the film. At one point, a rather poor actor playing a doorman comes to the door as Salieri is giving a lesson. The doorman delivers his line flatly, but Abraham's acting, in comparison to that, is incredibly nuanced, natural-looking, well-performed and believable. That's when I discovered that he won that Best Actor Oscar for a very,very good reason indeed.