250th Anniversary Tribute, More Than Deserved

Rating: 9/10 (30 January 2006)

Externally an ostentatious and grandiose highlight of the epic wide screen cinema, innerly a complex, moral essay about the classic motive of the vain who dares to start a fight with almighty powers, "Amadeus" was an enormous success, received eight Oscars in 1984 and three further nominations which was more than deserved in all respects.
The plot is half based on facts, half fictitious (especially the core of it - the relationship of Salieri and Mozart and their characterizations). In 1823 Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) claims, while being in a hospital, he had murdered Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and tells a young priest the story about him and the superstar of the classic period. 40 years earlier, Salieri is the court composer of Kaiser Joseph II. (Jones), young Mozart (Hulce) appears in Vienna. He is a nervy, foolish, voluptuous contemporary and laughs provokingly and grossly - but above all he wants to prove that he is the greatest composer of all time. After a short time, Mozart is introduced to the Kaiser, rewrites a quick authored composition by Salieri into a little, ingenious masterpiece, which later slips into "The Marriage of Figaro". He casts Katerina Cavalieri (Ebersole), Salieri's favorite student, for this opera in the lead role. And, to complete his luck in life, he marries Constanze (Berridge) and becomes the teacher of the Kaiser's niece. Salieri, meanwhile, starts to be more and more impressed by the divine music of Mozart and gets obsessed with the idea to murder his rival. In his life he only sees the sense to destroy the muse who seems to be predestined by God in creating such a terrific music. Salieri fights, intrigues, not only against Mozart, but also against God who apparently does not hear the desperate entreaties of making himself, Salieri, the divine musician on this Earth. That's why he burns the cross and tries everything to let Mozart die.
Forman stages a story of insanity  the insanity of Mozart and the insanity of Salieri, which are so contrary as are both characters. On the one side, you see the young, agile, in love with life Mozart, who thinks he is the greatest composer of his time. He is a lunatic showing that he does not work as a musician, he lives the music. He composes every single note in his mind, hears a whole score before writing it down. He is a person who tries to escape his dominant father, who faces life so unpractically that he has found the happiness in his wife, Constanze. She loves him unquestioningly and sees to do everything so that their little family can exist and survive. Tom Hulce and Elizabeth Berridge are playing their roles enthralling and wonderfully convincing. On the other side, there is Salieri, a self-obsessive man, who has the same dream as Mozart, but inwardly doubts his own skills and talent. In prayers, he obligates God as an ally to make his dream come true. Salieri lives in the condition of extortionate, egocentric insanity. He puts himself the claim to absoluteness. A staunch ascetic who works hard and intransigent. And then Mozart appears, a goofy clown, a ridiculous twit who makes supernatural music. Ravished by Mozart's music and ravingly jealous and envious at the same time, he starts to develop grim hatred and obsessive thoughts of murder. F. Murray Abraham plays the fictitious character Salieri grandiosely complex which makes it to one of the psychologically most interesting figures in cinema's history and got him the Oscar for Best Performance of the year.
The music also plays a sustaining role. There is probably barely another picture who incorporates given original material that perfectly makes Mozart's music a piece of the entire film in such an obliging way. It even takes the effect of being written only for it. In the course of the plot, one will see the core scenes of four Mozart operas: "The Abduction from the Seraglio", "The Marriage of Figaro", "Don Giovanni" and "The Magic Flute", and the staging of them are perfectly arranged and choreographed. Also captivating is the scene shortly before Mozart's death, when Mozart lies in the bed, composing a requiem in his head and telling Salieri to write down the notes to it. At the same time, music builds up for the viewer in the background, making it a seven minutes scene of impressing cinematic magic. Here is the genial mastermind of music, sick and bed-bound, and there is the clerk, staggering between awe, admiration, envy, despair, fantasies of obliteration, who holds the magnum opus, who sees the notes which he has written down but hasn't created, who sees how Constanze locks it in a cabinet after Mozart's death the next morning because she thinks that this composition has killed her husband. Salieri looks at the notes behind the glass door for the last time, a divine requiem, which, after all, is responsible for the death of Mozart. He succeeded in letting him die. Yet God took revenge on Salieri: Wasting away in a hospital, his music is forgotten, but Mozart's creation remains immortal.
Forman's "Amadeus" is an epic, where everything fits, a subtle, prudential composition, just like Mozart's operas. It's a dramatic, but at the same time comical production. Decors, the costumes, the baroque splendor of the absolutism, the cast, the music, the dialogs - everything is ingeniously attuned to one another. One does not have to be fond of classical music to appreciate this film. Some even say, through "Amadeus" you can get really enthusiastic about Mozart's music. But above everything the film is a story of a struggle: The insanity of an egotist against the insanity of a genius. And this Story is told in an immensely enthusing way. The question, if it complies the facts of the historic biographies of both lead characters correctly is completely unimportant because after all "Amadeus" is a cinematic, opera like drama and not a document on history.