Best Picture: #57
Original Release Date: September 19, 1984 (theatrical version)
Rating: R
Runtime: 3 hours (director’s cut)
Writer: Peter Shaffer
Director: Milos Forman
Quick Impressions:
Finally I can write about Amadeus! I’ve loved this movie since I first saw it when I was seven, and multiple people have now asked me if I’ll be watching it soon, so clearly others share my enthusiasm for this film. It’s one of the Best Picture winners I’ve been most eager to share with my daughter. And once again, I saw something in it that I’d never noticed before.
Recently I was having a conversation with my friend Veronica, and she told me that something I said really resonated with her. Since she has impeccable taste when it comes to what people should be reading, I decided to mention it here, too. When not too long ago, I competed in the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions, I briefly experienced some emotional turmoil and confusion. Because of an incorrect response, I lost any chance to advance almost immediately. And yet I kept feeling so happy. I was disappointed in myself, and yet the feelings of happiness kept breaking through. That made me ashamed and enraged. I thought, “What do you have to be so happy about, you idiot?” Part of me was happy, and then another part of me was angry and embarrassed for being irrationally happy.
Then it finally hit me.
The self-loathing over messing up one question was the irrational feeling, not the happiness.
(That’s the line Veronica likes so much. She said, “I think I need to get that embroidered and framed, or maybe tattooed on me.”) My judgment is not always sound, but hers is, so I’m including this line in my movie review.
Poor Salieri! He gets trapped in negative thought loops just like mine, but nothing ever shakes him out of them! As a child, I found this movie so delightful, mostly because of Salieri. It’s quite easy to see why F. Murray Abraham won Best Actor for his work here. My daughter was just as impressed as I’ve always been by his captivating line delivery and the intensity of his mute expressions.
But as a child, I found Amadeus sort of funny. This time, I see it as such heart-breaking tragedy. Salieri, for some reason, has decided to make an enemy of God. He’s like the sinners in Dante’s Inferno, kept in Hell not by God’s will, but because he refuses to look up and accept grace. He mistakes his own dark thoughts for the will of God. But just like my dark, nightmarish thoughts always turn out to originate in my own mind, all of this terrible darkness Salieri perceives as coming from without has actually originated in the tormented soul of Salieri himself.
To me, it’s just so sad for him that nothing ever interrupts this horrible, overwhelming spiral of dark thoughts. At several moments in the film, when Salieri prays, he hears dark, sinister music. I feel so bad for him. As a child, he believes that because he has prayed to become a musician, God has obligingly murdered his father (which quite disturbing, when you think about it). And then he makes a vow to deny himself all mortal pleasures in order to please God and be worthy of His favor. This is insane. Surely a loving God would never ask Salieri to torture himself because it would be against His fundamental nature. You would think that if Salieri could only realize this, he would be immensely relieved. Any person capable of rational thought would be. But apparently, Salieri is completely incapable of rational thought or course correction, and so he remains the tormented prisoner of his own irrational thoughts until he eventually destroys himself. It’s very sad.
The Good:
As a child, I loved the irony of Amadeus. When I was seven, I didn’t know how to articulate why I found the movie so funny. I just knew that I liked it because it reminded me of one of my favorite books as a preschooler, Hound and Bear. In the story that I loved so much, “The Long Night,” Hound decides to play a prank on his friend Bear by painting his window panes black. Throughout the day, Bear keeps waking up, discovering it is still dark outside, then going back to sleep. In the end, Hound reveals his prank. He’s rolling the floor, consumed with wild laughter because Bear has slept through the entire day. Then Bear says something like, “Oh no, Hound! It was your birthday today!” And it turns out that Bear has planned this whole surprise party that Hound has ruined with his prank!
Something similar (but far, far darker) is going on with Salieri in this movie. Late in the film, Mozart says, “I thought you did not care for my work,” and my daughter (a fan of F. Murray Abraham’s intense facial expressions) noted, “The shock!” on Salieri’s face. I said to her, “What’s funny is Salieri does care for his work more than anyone else. He’s like, ‘Can’t you see I’m the only one who does appreciate your work? That’s the whole reason I’ve devoted my life to murdering you!’”
Now obviously, Salieri is not the only person who appreciates Mozart’s work. The movie repeatedly shows us packed houses of people enjoying his music (particularly common people). But in Salieri’s mind, he’s the only person of taste, refinement, and education who recognizes the degree of Mozart’s musical genius. (And to a degree, Salieri perhaps has a point. In the movie, we do see that the emperor considers himself a musical genius but is, in fact, something of a buffoon. It is important to note, however, that Salieri is the one telling us this story. Every flashback sequence narrated by him presents characters as he has perceived and imagined them. And surely I don’t need to point out that Salieri is not the world’s most reliable narrator. He’s pretty much noted that for the audience himself by cheerfully talking in a madhouse of his successful attempt to destroy a man’s life.)
As a kid, I felt all of this but couldn’t explain it. We had terrible TV reception in that particular house in the woods, and so we’d rent a huge batch of movies every weekend. I would rewatch the ones I liked again and again throughout the week (often very early in the morning because school there stressed me out, and that way I felt I was putting it off, but that’s another story). I rewatched Amadeus several times, unable to articulate why I found it fascinating. But now that I’m older, I can say that it contains several elements that always appeal to me—irony, unreliable narrators, warped perspective. I like playing with all of that in my own writing. And then there’s something else, too, something darker, the unspeakable primal horror that perhaps through my own inadequacies I could somehow utterly destroy what is good. Salieri is wrong, of course. He can’t destroy God. And he flatters himself to think that he destroyed Mozart (who had his own character flaws). He certainly didn’t destroy Mozart’s work. In the end, he wasn’t actually talking to God at all. He was imagining some horrible deity who would gratify a childish impulse by murdering a little boy’s father. That God is only the dark fantasy of Salieri. And in the end, that is the only person Salieri can destroy, Salieri.
But you’ll notice, he hasn’t even managed that. The priest listens to this entire three-hour confession. (Of course, Salieri doesn’t let the confessor pardon him. Salieri insists on doing the pardoning because Salieri never listens to overtures from the real God.) But in the end, Salieri is alive. And he is the custodian of this amazing story that all of us watching the movie can appreciate. So in the end, Salieri doesn’t destroy God, and God refuses to let Salieri destroy himself completely. Despite Salieri’s best self-sabotaging efforts, God uses Salieri for good.
Of course, I couldn’t explain any of that when I was seven, and I couldn’t appreciate all of it. I see more and more in this movie every time I watch it. This time, I’m particularly stricken by the fact that all of this started for Salieri when he made a childish wish inside his secret most heart, and then his father dropped dead. Salieri mistakenly believes that this is the work of God, and because that’s the event that defines his relationship with God, his entire life becomes warped and miserable.
My daughter had what I thought was a great insight while we were watching the nightmarish Don Giovanni sequence. She lately has started wondering why we’re being shown everything and gets very critical if a scene she finds pointless drags on too long. So first she was complaining about the Don Giovanni sequence. Then she exclaimed, “Oh! I know why this is going on so long! Salieri thinks this is the guilt Mozart feels about ‘killing’ his father. But we’re seeing this because really Salieri feels guilty about killing Mozart.”
I agree with her, and I’d go further. The only reason we’re seeing this entire movie (or play if you saw it that way) is that Salieri feels guilty about killing his own father. (I even start to wonder. Because he feels his longing for musical genius directly killed his father, then does he think destroying the greatest musical genius he can find will somehow atone for this childhood sin? If Salieri thinks that God is complicit in that horrible act, then of course he hates God. He trusted God with his innermost desires, and (in his mind) God made him complicit in patricide.)
When I was a child, I found Mozart easy to identify with. People were always saying, “She’s so gifted,” and yet I was always behaving like…Mozart in this movie. I rewatched Amadeus (which I forgot to tell my daughter means “lover of God,” or, possibly “beloved of God” if you really want that meaning) thinking that I was quite a bit like Mozart. Now that I’m older, the title I’d give the film is The Cautionary Tale of Antonio Salieri. But as a kid, the character I liked was Mozart (even though Salieri was the one who made me love the film). So I suppose I should talk about Mozart here, too.
As a child and young teen, I was quite obsessed with Mozart. He was one of two classical (style not period) composers I loved. (My second favorite is Tchaikovsky, plenty of intense stories in his music, too. Beethoven, on the other hand, was too scary because my mother loved the “Moonlight Sonata” so much that every time she listened to it, she closed her eyes—even when she was driving!) I used to read biographies of Mozart compulsively. I love the way this film incorporates his music. Amadeus has got to have one of the best movie soundtracks there is. I used to run around the house listening to my Walkman to decompress, and Mozart’s Sonata 11 “Alla Turka” was one of my selections of choice.
In high school, I used to worry that I was too obsessed with Mozart and other random historical figures. When I was about fourteen, I couldn’t help but notice that I had a lot of strange interests. Then a horrible tragedy made a deep, indelible impression on me. A friend and classmate of my nine-year-old sister was going out for ice cream with her mom and siblings and some friends, when they got in a wreck. Her six-year-old brother was thrown through the windshield and killed. He was supposed to be baptized that Sunday. Instead, his funeral was the Saturday before. It was so horrible that I felt compelled to go with my mother and sister when they went to pay their respects at the viewing of the body in the funeral home. When we got there, my mom got into a conversation with my sister’s teacher. Meanwhile, my sister’s friend bounced over to us in a state of unsettling euphoria. She announced that she had been watching her favorite movie, Amadeus, that her mom had let her skip school just to watch it, and wasn’t that nice? And so I talked to her about Amadeus for about an hour while my mom had a conversation with their teacher. At the end, the little girl told me, “You’re the first person I’ve talked to all day who loves Amadeus as much as I do. Most people haven’t even seen it.” Then she told me to give my sister a hug for her “because she looks sad.” In the car, my sister and I broke down sobbing. We were so shaken. I’ve never forgotten that.
So besides a bunch of delicious irony, Amadeus also gives us the tragic early death of Mozart (which is not really caused by Salieri, his delusions of grandeur notwithstanding. Even in the movie—which is a fictional story, not even attempting historical accuracy—Salieri, at most, contributes to the death of Mozart by gently nudging him in unhelpful directions. In fact, as you watch, you begin to wonder, “Does Salieri even want to succeed in killing Mozart, really? Isn’t it more of a Joker/Batman relationship in Salieri’s mind?” Salieri doesn’t kill Mozart. God doesn’t kill Mozart. Even Mozart doesn’t kill Mozart! In the end, like everyone else, Mozart is killed by time and chance plus ill effects of his lifestyle.)
Though he’s overshadowed by F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce is also very good as Mozart. (I wish I could have seen Mark Hamill as Mozart. When I found out he’d played the role on the stage and wanted to be in the movie, I was so mad. I don’t see why people wouldn’t accept Luke Skywalker as Mozart! Well, I do see, actually, but I would have accepted it!) Hulce makes Mozart quite compelling. My daughter loved his laugh, his clothing, his outbursts, and, especially, his hair. Before watching Amadeus, she had assumed Mozart was an old man because of the powdered wigs she’s seen him wearing in portraits. But Tom Hulce plays him like a rock star.
The movie is full of good performances. Someone easy to overlook is Richard Frank as Father Vogler, the priest listening in horror and anguish to Salieri’s confession. He’s quite important, just in case anyone in the audience misses the point and thinks we’re not supposed to be horrified and saddened by what Salieri is saying. Jeffrey Jones is also really good as the emperor. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better performance by Jones. In fact, when I first started watching the movie this time, I had forgotten that he is the actor who plays the emperor. Sometimes his personal life overshadows his work.
My daughter also hated the maid so much that I feel I should mention the actress playing her…who is Cynthia Nixon!!!!!! (Sorry, I just discovered that while writing this sentence!) How did I never recognize her? She actually looks just like herself. She made my daughter so violently angry that I have to think she’s giving a good performance. My daughter was mad because the maid gets increasingly afraid to be working in that environment, but the person she is afraid of is Mozart, who is clearly just ill. In the maid’s defense, however, I’ll say that is possible that she is just too intimidated by Salieri to tell him that her real fear is that what they are doing may be contributing to Mozart’s decline. My daughter was so furious with her, though. She kept yelling during the funeral scene, “Why are you sobbing, maid? You’re terrified of him, remember? Sick people are so terrifying, I thought!” She also suggested that Salieri should cut out the middleman and dress up as the maid himself, speaking in a Mrs. Doubtfire voice, in order to get a peek at the music.
Best Scene:
It’s so gripping when Salieri is writing down the Requiem for Mozart near the movie’s ending. When I watch this scene, I always hope (in vain) that Salieri will turn a corner. He seems just about to have a breakthrough.
Throughout the entire movie, he prays to God to make him a better musician. Then he’s given the opportunity to work closely with Mozart. At so many points, Mozart offers to help him revise his music. This happens repeatedly, and it always makes Salieri furious. He’s like the guy in that old joke who dies in the flood waiting for God to save him after ignoring all the boats that keep coming by.
But in this moment, Salieri finally seems to be learning something from Mozart. So you think, “Maybe at the eleventh hour, he’ll turn a corner.” Even though I’ve seen the movie multiple times, I always still think that. It reminds me of Romeo + Juliet, when it kind of seems like there might be some last minute twist in the Baz Lurhmann version. (That moment was stunning me in the theater the first time, until some girl who had brought an extra credit worksheet said to her friend in a stage whisper, “This is dramatic irony,” and then checked off something with her pencil.)
Best Scene Visually:
I like the scene when Salieri first encounters Mozart. Salieri is off sneaking around and steals a piece of chocolate. For some reason, he has promised God to deny himself all personal pleasures. I can’t speak for God, but I find it hard to believe He would care if Salieri eats a piece of chocolate. Surely nobody else at court would care either. If he hung out with everybody else, surely somebody would say, “Here, Salieri, have a chocolate!” But Salieri must torture himself and sneak around to derive pleasure. Then he meets the Batman to his Joker who is crawling around on the floor telling off-color riddles to a woman he is seducing and following his every human impulse without any self-censoring or question.
That’s just one great scene. The movie is replete with visual symbolism (which my daughter loved). Plus, the sets and costumes are incredible. And there are some great visual moments like spitting out the candle, burning the crucifix. Salieri turns on God with pageantry appropriate to the horrifying degree of his intent.
Best Action Sequence:
Both my daughter and I loved Salieri’s alarm when Mozart passes out during a performance near the end of the movie. I exclaimed, “Salieri’s like, ‘No! He can’t die yet! My requiem!’” Meanwhile, my daughter, a fledgling bassoonist, noted, “You’re always supposed to keep going. They tell us, even if someone passes out, you keep playing.” She also observed, “Maybe the reason we always see Salieri’s face watching is that he feels powerless to do anything. He feels like he has no agency. Oh, and also, he’s like, ‘God is not listening to me,’ but in all those scenes I mentioned, Salieri is not saying anything! He’s the one who’s not talking. God is listening.” And then I pointed out the irony that a priest is listening attentively to his three-hour confession. The priest, has, in fact, come all the way into a very unappealing, Hell-like madhouse to reach out to him.
The Negatives:
I’ve already written a lot. Fortunately, there’s not much wrong with Amadeus. The only thing I noticed that stands out to me isn’t exactly something bad. Tom Hulce (nominated for Best Actor but beaten at the Oscars by his co-star) does an amazing job of making Mozart seem to occupy the late 1700s and the mid-1980s simultaneously. On the other hand, playing his wife Constanze, Elizabeth Berridge seems mostly 1980s in a period dress. But now, that is highly preferable to (stiffly) pretending to be in Masterpiece Theatre in a period dress. And my daughter cheered at Constanze’s retributive triumph over Salieri in the end, when she locks away his precious object (in a glass case where everyone can see it) and kicks him out of her house. So I’m certainly not saying she’s bad as Constanze, just that since my childhood, her performance has always stood out to me as slightly different from the others.
That’s the only negative thing I have to say, really. (And I’m not saying it that emphatically. I like Berridge as Constanze.) I suppose it’s also good to note (once again) that this is not a true story. Though it is based on certain historical events, it is not just history with liberties taken here and there; it is fiction. That’s not a negative, just a warning. If you want to find out about Mozart’s life, read non-fiction books about him. There are plenty, so many you could spend your whole allowance on them, and there would still be others you couldn’t afford. (Don’t ask me how I know this.)
Overall:
Amadeus is one of my favorite Best Picture winners ever, and I think everyone should watch it at least once. Even if you hate the story (which seems impossible), the music is hard to fault. My daughter loved it, too, and praised all of its rich visual imagery and symbolism. We watched the director’s cut this time, but any version of the film is excellent.