Amadeus

Rating: Null/10 (11 November 2012)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as depicted in Peter Shaffer's abundantly successful Amadeus, has father issues. Although he enabled his son's musical career by parading his freakish talents across Europe like a circus sideshow (and profiting from his displays of precocious virtuosity), Leopold Mozart won't indulge Amadeus a bit of irreverent fun, and disapproves of his financial recklessness and his wife's inability to keep a clean house. Mozart rebels after his father's death by summoning his militaristic ghost through a very serious-sounding opera. Antonio Salieri, who rejoiced at the death of his non-musical, biological father, rebels on a much grander scale against his spiritual father for having created Salieri with a burning desire to create music, but lacking the talent to excel, while imbuing Mozart, a vulgar creature, with musical genius. Salieri's revenge materializes in an extremely indirect scheme in which he anonymously commissions a financially strapped, physically ailing Mozart to compose a requiem mass for his dead father. Tom Hulce, whose superbly entertaining portrayal of Mozart emphasizes the wackiness of his character, cannot, in a convincing way, deliver Mozart's proclamation that the requiem project is killing him. Salieri's suicidal guilt, however, over a murder plot that we cannot recognize as such, is convincing, because if Mozart were not dying from Salieri's disguised insistence on, and overt assistance in, the composition of the requiem, then, in Salieri's mind, there would be no revenge. What Salieri lacks in musical acumen, and will lack in posthumous recognition, he more than compensates with psychological intensity. All of the instances of mockery and one-upmanship directed toward Salieri, though beautifully amusing to us, don't amass to the superiority of Salieri's emotional depth over Mozart's. From beginning to end, Amadeus is more about Salieri (even a highly fabricated version of him) than it is about Mozart. Mozart's primary dilemma in the film—his desire to create popular music loved by all, while still satisfying his artistic inclination toward the avant garde, as well as the predominantly conservative sensibilities of his primary employers—culminates in an ideological confrontation between Mozart and the court of Emperor Joseph II, who has discovered, through a stretch of espionage perpetrated by none other than Salieri, that Mozart has composed an opera based on The Marriage of Figaro, a comic play banned by the Emperor. At first, Mozart tries to appeal to the emperor's love of music by relating the excitingly innovative musical attributes of the piece. Quickly, the argument turns to the source material, which the members of Joseph's court agree is "vulgar." This sets Mozart off into a tirade against "elevated" art. "Why must we go on forever writing only about gods and legends?" he asks the court. "Because they do," explains Baron Van Swieten, "they go on forever. Or at least what they represent. The eternal in us." Emperor Joseph quietly considers both sides. Jeffrey Jones' pivotal performance here as the emperor is his best, and one of the best in the film: hilarious and finely crafted. Mozart's dilemma, while reflecting the main theme of the movie, remains academic. Salieri's dilemma, on the other hand—between his unbridled appreciation for Mozart's musical supremacy—a supremacy which Salieri feels that he alone recognizes in its time—and his overwhelming jealousy over his own inescapable inferiority—dramatically courses through every frame of the film like lifeblood through the veins of a madman. Lest we conclude that the multiply revisited dilemma of Salieri is composed of too few notes, an assessment of F. Murray Abraham's intricately brilliant, Oscar-winning triumph proves quite the contrary. Abraham tackles every return to Salieri's venomous quarrel with his imprisoning lot with fresh, specific, passionate, artistic choices—on par with Mozart's legendary choices in the musical realm. Playing both the reflective, embittered, aged incarnation of Salieri, who narrates from within a physical asylum, and the younger Salieri, trapped within the asylum of his mind and situation, Abraham's performance serves the dual purpose of conveying the mad vengeance of Salieri's mediocrity and fleshing out the mad genius of his rival and idol—through infinitely expressive, stirring reactions to Mozart's accomplishments and to Salieri's unraveling defeat. Salieri's dilemma culminates in a climactic scene in which Salieri takes dictation from a dying Mozart, struggling to capture his uncontainable creativity, visibly and vocally admiring his ability, while gently helping him to his early grave. Outstanding performances by Abraham, Hulce, Jones, and the rest of the cast are accompanied by the Oscar-winning direction of Milos Forman and definitive renditions by The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, conducted by Neville Marriner, whose musical recordings Forman weaves into the narrative like an expert artisan crafting a masterful tapestry.