Mediocrity as a subject as well as the resulting movie

Rating: 4/10 (10 July 2005)

Mediocrity is not only the topic of this movie but also the movie itself. Is is mediocre to say least. One would expect more out of a movie called Amadeus. The correlation with Mozart is totally out of place. There is nothing in this movie about nobility, greatness, extraordinary people or anything else among the lines of higher understanding or one self's quest for betterness.
The characters behave totally out of place. The action is taking places in the mids of aristocratic society yet everyone from the emperor to the opera director and to the servants behave like 21st century below-average income American citizens. The German (or Austrian) culture is fully ignored giving way to the "american style" (as it appears to common individual, not as it is in real life).
The actions the characters take, as well as the results of those actions, are totally unwarranted. No reason is given as to way the character would act in the manner described or why their actions would yield the shown effect. This is deliberately so that it allows for "desire gratification". This is taking a wish out of real-life (son-father relationships is the mill for most such wishes in this movie), setting up a scene that will make one recognize his (perhaps frustrated) desire in it, and then, contrary to what would've happened in real-life {and by doing so destroying character consistency}, gratify it (with the proper evolution in the plot). This technique is also used for social manipulation in forming a distorted view of reality. One example is when "the great Mozart" has to submit his work to be evaluated by a committee despite the fact his works is great, he is intimate (i.e. close friends) with the emperor and the emperor could just appoint him. Like please, get real, in life people DO get appointed even when their work sucks just because they have access to the decision factors. As it must've become obvious by now, I am highly resentful of this type of "your situation is better than you think and you should accept it as it is the same even for the most noble".
Art should propose a message and argue its validity, not try to impose it by all sorts of subliminal affirmations.
Acting is terrible. Like no one really expects the people playing ballet on the scene truly be ballet-players. But they SHOULD move in at least a decent amount of sync. And when the piano is played, again, some correlation between the melody and the motion of the hands over the keys is expected.
That being said, this is perhaps one of the best movies for its purposes. The story is told trough the eyes of the mediocre court-composer Antonio Salieri. The troubles of the characters are the troubles of the average individual of the 21st century (like bad credit, alcohol, bureaucracy, father, mother-in-law, etc.). What disappoints me about the movie is that these issues are not treated from a higher-perspective like one would expect but instead they are settled within the scope and understanding of the average individual.