Amadeus
1984
Directed by Milos Forman
Screenplay by Peter Schaffer, based on his play
Starring F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, Jeffrey Jones
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Rather than being a "straight" biography of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,
Schaffer and Forman chose to tell his story in flashback through the eyes
of his rival, composer Antonio Sallieri. Years after Mozart's death, Sallieri
attempts suicide over feelings of guilt arrising from his belief that he
was responsible for the younger composer's death. Sallieri, we learn, became
a composer to glorify God but was capable of writing only technically precise
and unimpassioned music. He grew to quickly resent God and to hate Mozart
who was a profound genius, despite being a vulgar, faithless hedonist. Abraham
deservedly won an Oscar as Sallieri, a character who has come to symbolize
mediocrity's envy of talent. Tom Hulce as Mozart and Jeffrey Jones as Austrian
Emporer Joseph II are both excellent. The period detail (shot mostly on location
in Prague), cinematography and costumes are all fantastic, but in the end
it is the perfect, flawless music that we -- and Sallieri -- are moved by.
A powerful, tragic film.
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