Madness, Music and Mozart

 Jealousy and Divine Inspiration

Amadeus (1984) – The life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, based on a popular legend of his death in the court of the Austrian Emperor.

Directed by Milos Forman

Starring – F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, Elizabeth Berridge, Jeffrey Jones 

Why I Liked It – A brilliant movie in every aspect.

This is one of the “Wow!” movies for me.  From the very first time I saw it in the theater in 1984 to this most recent viewing, the movie stuns me with its fabulous everything.  The script is based less on the true story of Mozart and his rival composer, Antonio Salieri, than it is on a long-standing legend of the two men.  Salieri was a talented and popular composer, but the arrival of the brilliant Mozart pushes him to the background.  All of that is true.  What we see in the movie regarding the characters lives, especially Salieri, has been fictionalized for the purposes of creating this fantasy world.

The performances by the two male leads are spectacular enough that both earned nomination for the Best Actor Oscar, with Abraham winning.  He is brilliant as the intensely jealous, intensely worshipful composer.  But the range that Hulce covers as Mozart is almost unbelievable to watch.  Not that the character is unbelievable, but the spectrum of the character would be a challenge to any actor.  From the vulgar, hedonistic young man who arrives with a distinctive shrieking laugh, to the dying man clinging to his last thread of sanity as he tries to complete his final work.  There are many other wonderful performances in this movie, but Hulce and Abraham operate on a different, higher frequency than those around them.

The movie spurred a revival of Salieri’s work, and resulted one of the best selling classical music albums of all time.  It is visually stunning filled with a thousand details in every shot.  Hulce’s Mozart floats through his own fantasy version of the world around him until he believes he receives a visit from the ghost of his dead father.  Then the fragility of his world is revealed as the pieces are stripped away.  For Salieri, Abraham shows a man writhing on the point of a double edged blade.  One side is intense jealousy for the God-given talent of his rival, the other his intense devotion to the beauty that is created by that talent.

And the music!  It retains that incredible beauty, that supernatural quality that has made Mozart a touchstone of western classical music for centuries.  I do not like opera much at all, even as I can admire the skill required, but the opera scenes fascinated me, especially “Don Giovanni”.

Everything about this movie is so far beyond the everyday that it’s hard to describe.  The almost three hour run time disappears under the beauty of it all.  Almost four decades later, “Amadeus” retains is electric character.

Rating – ***** Highest Recommendation