In-Depth Review of "Amadeus" (1984)

Disclaimer: this review is written for people who have seen the movie. There are spoilers. For reviews like these I like to go into a little more depth and detail and also explore possible interpretations of the film.

I decided to revisit another favorite of mine, Miloš Forman's classic Amadeus, a film released in the late summer of 1984. I wanted to review this film to give a concrete example of the "the steady stream of work from more 'serious' directors unconcerned with box-office statistics [during the summer]," as I wrote on my first post.

The director's cut, the version I watched, is about three hours long. I am a proponent of pith. Nevertheless, to those of you who think this movie too long, I would ask: which scenes would you remove, Your Majesty?

Amadeus is practically perfect—sumptuous, miraculous, and epic. Nevertheless, the film’s intimacy, focused mainly on the mythologized relationship between composers Mozart and Salieri, is most developed. Mozart is prodigious, obviously, but also flouting, boyish, and boorish. Salieri is indignant, jealous, tortured, and tortuous. Amadeus is not a biography about Mozart or Salieri, but is about the complex conflict between these two men of unequal talent and political influence.

Amadeus’s style is romantic and opulent, congruous with the foundational and original music of the actual Amadeus Mozart. His delicately structured, blissful pieces with occasional symphonic eruptions are mirrored in the film. Nearly every frame is decadent, its fundamental scenes are taut and well-crafted, and its dramatic payoffs are stirring. The movie was universally acclaimed, winning eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Moreover, its two leads—F. Murray Abraham as Salieri and Tom Hulce as Mozart—were both nominated for Best Actor. Even more incredibly, Abraham won the award, despite surely splitting some of those votes with Hulce.

In film circles, the Mozart character in Amadeus is seen too often as a prop that exists merely to challenge our narrator, Salieri. Salieri is the main character, yes, but the Mozart character develops irrespective of Salieri. If Amadeus were indeed a eponymous biography, it would work nearly as well, because of how developed the Mozart character is. The genius’s relationship with his oppressive father is key. From an extremely young age, Mozart has been trained (“like a monkey”) to please his father through phenomenal music. Even when he is in another city or is dead, his son Mozart feels compelled to please him further. (This, along with Salieri’s view of him, could support a Mozart-as-Jesus interpretation.)

His father is also, throughout the film, seen as a personification of death. This adds to Mozart’s motivation in two ways: his grief, after his father’s death, drives him to write his darkest music; and he is compelled to create everlasting work, even on his deathbed, that will live beyond his own death through posterity.

Antonio Salieri, usually seen as Amadeus's main character, idolizes Mozart from a young age and longs to be a similarly great composer. Salieri maintains that he wanted to create music in order to sing the word of God, but it is easily discerned that this is a mere pretense, that what Salieri truly wants is fame and admiration and, most of all, talent that can be used for political gain. When Mozart comes to Vienna and proves Salieri to be comparatively mediocre, Salieri feels divinely punished—directly even, since he thinks Mozart to be “the voice of God.” (“Amadeus” literally translates to “love of God.”) Because of this direct connection between Mozart and God from Salieri’s perspective it is the relationship between Salieri and the Almighty that is central to Amadeus.

Through the rest of the film, Salieri is awe-struck by the miraculous work of Mozart, and effectively undercuts him at every turn. “Through my influence, I saw to it Don Giovanni was played only five times in Vienna. But, in secret, I went to every one of those five, worshipping sounds I alone seemed to hear.” The movie’s resolution nears once Salieri, dressed in the father’s deathly costume, urges Mozart to write a requiem mass, which Salieri plans to perform at Mozart’s funeral once he kills him. He would steal God’s voice to spite Him.

This task, combined with financial trouble and continual grief, finally drives Mozart to his death. Ironically, due to Salieri’s consistent sabotages, Mozart’s funeral was trifling—he was buried in a pauper’s mass grave—so even if Salieri’s plan had succeeded his performance of the poignant requiem would have gone unheard. In Amadeus, Antonio Salieri willfully challenges the manifestation of God as well as God himself. Understandably, the patron saint of mediocrity failed on both counts.

Well, there it is.