Jealousy can destroy a career, but not divine talent

Rating: 1/10 (23 July 2013)

Amadeus tries to demonstrate the idea that you can destroy a man's career, but you can't stop his divine talent from being unleashed onto the world.
The movie tries to show this with three external plots: the plot to destroy Mozart's career by Salieri, the plot of Mozart's fame and the plot of Salieri's fame (where fame roughly represents their musical reputation). Salieri succeeds in destroying Mozart's career by killing him. Mozart's fame endures as his divine creations are valued by posterity. Salieri's fame on the other hand, fades as his musical works are largely forgotten.
The movie starts out with Salieri as an old man recollecting about his triumph over Mozart. By this point, the world has forgotten him and only remember's Mozart's music. From there on, the movie goes on to show us Salieri destroying Mozart's career.
The movie was a waste of time because from the first scene on, we are told what will happen: that Salieri's jealousy destroys Mozart's career but not his everlasting fame. Then the movie goes on to show us just that, with no surprises of any kind. The portrayal of the main plot of Salieri destroying Mozart is thus predictably episodic. And with no meaningful internal or relationship turning points to keep us interested, the movie plods forward trying to make us pity poor Mozart. The movie limps to its inevitable conclusion and drags us through a 3 hour picture show with no drama. Even the subplots of Mozart's fame (which endures) and Salieri's fame (which dies) are not punctuated with highs at the end. All we are left with is a 3 hour sap story and way too many scenes of random operas. If we wanted to appreciate Mozart's talent, time is better spent just listening to his music or watching an opera instead of sitting through this picture slideshow.
My Story Chart of the movie is at storycharts.ca