Amadeus (1984)
MILOS FORMAN’S MA NON TROPPO VIVACE
by Jessie V.Although Amadeus isn’t ostensibly a holiday movie, I can’t seem to pass through this time of year without an urge to settle in with a hot chocolate and watch it. I remember first seeing this film with my mother when I was very young at a small theater where they showed it sometime after its initial release. It was exactly one year after I’d started playing violin and two years after I began begging my parents to allow me to play. I was too young to fully appreciate how astounding, mesmerizing and utterly flawless Milos Forman’s production is, but it was still so memorable nonetheless. I sat at the edge of my seat, compelled by Mozart’s enormous talent, hoping that someday I’d be as gifted and memorable as he. But I think that is kind of the point of the film.
Amadeus is a movie that depicts what we sometimes feel when we see others excel at something we could only dream of ever approaching: utter awe and then, sometimes, bitterness, sinfully piercing jealousy, even rage. Forman has directed a smorgasborg of movie themes, including jealousy (Valmont), madness (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), and genius (Man on the Moon). Most of Forman’s films are viewed directly from the mind of the character at issue, but Amadeus may be his highest achievement; it brings many of these previous themes together and, more importantly, presents them through the eyes of someone more like us than his iconoclastic characters.Amadeus is conveyed from the perspective of Antonio Salieri (played by the brilliant F. Murray Abraham), the court composer to Emperor Joseph II during Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s brief but ridiculously prolific career — he died at the age of 35 — and the man who may have contributed to, if not caused, the death of one of the world’s greatest composers. We hear the story from an aging Salieri years later: while confined to an asylum after a failed suicide attempt, Salieri relates his life to a young priest, and how he came to meet, grow to despise, and ultimately kill Mozart (played by the amazing Tom Hulce). Only we’re never fully sure if his story is completely true. What is evident is that if Salieri has gone mad, he became that way by envy.
Salieri was an actual composer, and is even still a fairly well-regarded one. His music is somewhat dense and flat, but also tightly structured and purposeful, clearly the product of someone very loyal to his craft. And this is the Salieri we get to know in the film — a monastic musician who has virtually pledged his chastity to God in return for musical talent. But Salieri’s rising stardom was dimmed by Mozart’s sudden arrival in town. Mozart swept through Vienna’s music scene like an avalanche, composing the majority of his more than 600 works — which included 22 operas, 41 symphonies (though unofficially, up to 72), 30 piano concertos, and 27 string quartets — while residing there. The rest is history, as far as the real story goes; very little is known about the actual relationship between Salieri and Mozart, and whether the allegedly envious actually killed the apparent genius is a secret we will likely never know.
Mozart, at least as far as the movie goes, was a rather pompous, arrogant, vile thing who sent shivers down Salieri’s spine. In the movie, he is an immature quipster, and at the film’s end, when he is brusquely buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave, we feel sympathy for the wife and son he leaves behind, but less so for him. His character is brilliant yet condescending, capricious and somewhat aloof, and hardly human at all. His genius is an amazing beauty, a creative flame glowing so brightly we can hardly look at it, yet at the same time, we can hardly look away. Musical scores spring fully formed from his head; he listens to his mother-in-law admonish him, and the final aria from his opera The Magic Flute inscribes itself in his brain. Salieri composes a march that the Emperor performs for Mozart’s arrival in Vienna, and not only does Mozart memorize it after one hearing, but he plays it back to the court and edits it into his own divertimento. And yet Mozart is also ostensibly just a man, though a talented man that Salieri wishes he could be.
How could God reward this disgusting man with such a beautiful and miraculous gift? We have all, at one point, been a Salieri. The pianist who has struggled to grasp the intricacies of her instrument, only to watch a very young musician surpass her with ease — she is a Salieri. The aspiring writer who struggles to draft a screenplay or even a simple short story every day, only to come across, on the new releases stand, a brilliantly polished novel written by someone the same age or younger — he is Salieri. The worker who puts in extra hours on a matter only to see a junior associate waltz in and produce better work in much less time and maybe even take a two hour lunch — she’s Salieri, too. We see these people and we want them to disappear — gone from the picture. “No, no. There is something wrong here,” we tell ourselves. “They can’t just be all this; there must be some kind of a catch.” But then we witness their work, we examine their craft, we even get to know them personally, and we realize that “No, no. There is nothing wrong here.” They are simply the culmination of everything we’ve ever wanted to be.
Jealousy of status is a common occurrence — we see what others appear to have and we wish we had it too: their homes, their hair, their families, their lifestyle. But jealousy of capability is another affliction, though fortunately, typically a rarer one. Often, we can chalk it off, ascribe someone’s skill to wealth or privilege, and go to bed convinced that we are just as good as they are — if we had the same advantages, we’d be gifted too. Sometimes, though, we find ourselves directly in a Salieri situation, confronted with the grim truth that despite our considerable ability, we will never be as good as them. They are simply, objectively, supernaturally, better.
Salieri is a very talented composer, and luckily, he recognizes it. Unfortunately, he’s also smart enough to realize the various ways in which Mozart’s skill exceeds his. Salieri’s talent is the result of considerable determination, diligence, and a little denial. When he witnesses someone as naturally gifted as Mozart continually embarrass and sabotage himself, throw his life and future away, Salieri can’t help but question why God has suddenly turned against him. While we may not all consider this type of situation in starkly religious terms, isn’t it something we have all kind of felt at one point or another? Salieri decides that he will destroy Mozart, strip him of his reputation and social standing and ruin him; yes, kill him. He concocts a plan to accomplish this, to sabotage Mozart and his craft, and sets it all into motion. But in the end he is left to deal with his conscience.
F. Murray Abraham received an Oscar for his work on this film, though it wasn’t simply for his narration. Salieri’s purpose in the movie isn’t merely to describe Mozart’s genius and moral character; rather, Mozart’s purpose is meant to describe Salieri’s jealousy. When Mozart launches into his ridiculous laugh, when he commits one social blunder and indiscretion after another before the entire Habsburg court, we don’t really sympathize with him. Instead, we feel sorry for Salieri as he watches it all unfold from the stage wings, because we know what he’s thinking — that he’s spent his entire life working hard to accomplish his dream, he has gotten here, and now this! Amadeus isn’t really about the miracle of virtuosity — it’s about the inequity and unfairness that brilliance sometimes creates in a world full of hard-working, well-intentioned but ultimately average Salieris. One of my favorite lines from the film is when Salieri shouts, “I speak for all mediocrities in the world! I am their champion! I am their patron saint! Mediocrity is everywhere; I absolve you!” It’s a movie about and for (most of) us.
Jessie V. is a student and violinist living in Reykjavík. She tumbls here.
