Film Review: "Amadeus"

Amadeus (1984)

Director: Miloš Forman

Writer: Peter Shaffer

Stars:  F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, Elizabeth Berridge

Music by: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Antonio Salieri

Distributed by: Orion Pictures (Original)/Warner Bros. (Current)

Release date: September 19, 1984

Running time: 161 minutes

Country: United States

Synopsis: Antonio Salieri, a prosperous composer, one of the most influential of his time, seems to have everything he could ever dream of – glory, wealth, respect. He believes himself to be a genius, until one day fate brought him together with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a young scapegrace and lady’s man, who nevertheless writes divine music, incomparable in its brilliance with the one composed by Salieri. Driven by malignant envy, Antonio devises and carries out a plan of revenge: still pretending to be a friend of Mozart, he deceives him in order to make the genius write a requiem mass and then claim to be the music’s composer. The intention is nearly put into practice due to Mozart’s bad health, but the young man dies without having finished the requiem, while Salieri, now fully persuaded that he is a mediocrity as compared to his rival, loses his mind and spends the rest of his days in a mental asylum.

Review:

The story we’re told in this film has been known to most of us since our school days – the plot is evidently based on Alexander Pushkin’s “Mozart and Salieri,” from the short-story collection “Little Tragedies.” According to the text, an evil man Antonio Salieri, driven by envy, poisoned his friend, or rival actually, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who wrote marvelous in its beauty music. The authors of “Amadeus” were evidently of the same opinion, as the legend is preserved in the film in its primordial appearance.

In this connection it’d be worth saying that the movie is one of the most successful works by Jan Miloš Forman, a Czech-American director, screenwriter, and professor. By the way, it wasn’t a great surprise for the film to win 8 Oscars – Forman’s previous creations were also nominees at various film festivals. Thus, his “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest” received 5 Oscars as well.

If we return to “Amadeus” again, we’ll see that there’re not so much special effects used in it, or any evident anachronisms that would strike one’s eyes – the whole movie is sustained in the late 18^th century style, one scene melts into another without abrupt jolts of transition (maybe, except from some scenes at the ball, but here, I believe, picture flickering is inevitable), and this is a success of the film. The same refers to the costume design and the whole atmosphere – everything looked very authentic.

And now some words about the actors’ performance. I don’t think it’d sound strange if I said I liked Murray Abraham as Salieri best of all. He was really impressive as a villain! Well, not quite a villain, but a very complicated figure, possessing a false idea of his own importance. He tormented himself and tortured others, but looked very trustworthy. As for his partner Tom Hulce, he was also vivid; the only thing is that I had imagined Mozart and still do in some other way – Hulce seemed to be more of a person of our time, just an ordinary fellow next-to-door, not a great composer of all times.

To sum it up, I’d like to say that I’m not sorry at all for having watched the film and the time spent. There’re films that make up the world gold movie collection, and this is one of them. I don’t think it’ll ever be out-of-date, for the problems of human envy and jealousy, gift of God and the lack of one, a talented person’s loneliness and isolation from the society are still of the same topicality. So I’d recommend this film to everyone, if not for pleasure, then for self-educational purposes.