Phony-Baloney Mozart Shines When It's Fun and Games, but Withers When We Are to Believe His Genius

Rating: 6/10 (3 February 2012)

Give something that rhymes with Mozart and a kid today would say "Old Fart!" since Mozart is only reserved for those high-brow, supercilious opera-lovers who feign to appreciate actual music. Well, many people do pretend to be connoisseurs of art, but there are a few who can actually find a communion with music. One of them was Antonio Salieri, a decent composer but a brilliant connoisseur of music. To him, as he said it himself, Mozart was 'the voice of God', and Salieri could actually understand the genius' thought process behind writing the music. How would this man of extraordinary skills be of character? Would he silent the entire audience with his eloquence and profoundness, outside his music, as a person?
In 'Amadeus', Salieri gets his answer; if the true Mozart were like this, which is highly unlikely, then he would think of these high-brows as 'dlo trafs!'. In fact, Mozart, in Amadeus, is a prodigy in music who never takes anything seriously. Salieri wonders how such a creature could possess such genius; he feels God has purposely avenged Salieri by bestowing upon him average talents while handing Mozart infinite capabilities. As a lunatic in his old age in an asylum, Salieri narrates his life to a priest. In the amusing scene, Salieri plays two of his compositions to the priest and asks them to guess the name of the song, but the priest isn't able to. Then he plays a very familiar tune and the priest immediately recognizes the tunes. Salieri sighs, and slowly tells him that it was 'not' his work, it was Mozart's. It does not come as a surprise here: when I type Mozart in Word document, I get no spell error, but the moment I type Salieri, it is underlined in red!
Poor Salieri believes he has killed Mozart, and tells the priest about his lifelong dream to be a great composer and his contempt towards Mozart, the person while reverence towards Mozart's music. Mozart, played by Tom Hulce, is a fiendish, vulgar, lascivious and crude genius who later shows his soft side while Salieri is a passionate, soft-spoken Italian who then becomes two-faced, contemptuous, and monomaniacal and later lunatic. Mozart and his wife struggle to earn money while get fame and respect, while Salieri gets money and fame but struggles to earn talent. For Salieri, it is an internal defeat and hence he tries to bring down Mozart in whichever way possible while wholeheartedly lauding his music.
Much of the film is shown from the viewpoint of Salieri, but then shifts to Mozart's own personal life and hardships. The maid has been thoughtfully kept so that Salieri is able to tell from Mozart's point of view, in case some would be wondering how Salieri knew so much about Mozart's personal life. When Salieri tells about his first experience with Mozart, where the latter is shamelessly caressing his lover under the table in the palace, Mozart plays by telling his lover then wife, Constanze to guess the words spoken by him backwards, then speaks all lewd words. It does feel out-of-place hearing some of the lines here, especially 'eat my s**t' and 'kiss my a**' but nevertheless funny. The scenes with the Count in the palace are absolute bananas, especially to observe the stark contrast between Mozart and the others. Even Salieri's constant plotting is very interesting and enjoyable, especially his most knavish act with Constanze.
'Amadeus', however, fails to provide a thorough justification to its initial build-up. We know how Salieri loved Mozart's music but hated Mozart himself but the moment Salieri's role diminishes and the focus shifts to Mozart, it is difficult to actually sympathize with Salieri's guilt. It is a very common phenomenon, like if we have one actor playing a character for a period of time and then another actor takes his/her place and the audience feels a bit alienated. Also, Tom Hulce gave his Mozart a one-dimensional comic book quality that showed him throughout the 160 minutes of the film as a person of mediocre talents except when playing in those operas in the theater. It is almost impossible to believe that this Mozart was so profound, and 'Figaro' and 'Requiem' were his compositions. I'm not saying that an artist has to have that aura always; I have foul-mouthed, alcoholic, erratic friends who are good actors/musicians/composers/businessmen but these people had a certain quality in them that I could associate with their talent. And this erratic Mozart should have had that quality in him throughout the movie which could make me believe that he was the Mozart indeed. And the incongruous accent doesn't help either.
Salieri is played beautifully by F. Murray Abraham; his effectively gives his character the shiftiness while advising Mozart and honestly while praising his music. But I found the climactic scene between the two characters to be somewhat underwhelming; I know it was difficult to execute, but it still had to have so many more emotions stirring up in such circumstances. This also wore off the effect of the grand catharsis, which is similar but not as effective as the endings in Stanley Kubrick's 'Dr. Strangelove' or 'A Clockwork Orange'. Much of this I find fault with Tom Hulce's sterile performance.
Out of the supporting characters, only Jeffrey Jones truly succeeded in playing his character with the right comedic seriousness. Elizabeth Berridge was competent but inconsistent, her accent not helping much either. The only turkey, according to me, was Simon Callow and the c-word was completely unnecessary in the movie. The music itself was brilliantly performed, all of them. One could see the faults with Salieri's congested arrangements and feel the depth of Mozart's compositions, especially in the requiem for his father. And I discovered that these compositions did have words- I was dumb enough to think these singers were warbling just notes, no words!