Amadeus (1984) Review

Lucas Versantvoort / November 5, 2014

“It seemed to me that I was hearing the very voice of God.”

—Antonio Salieri

Amadeus is an incredible film, both in terms of its place in film history and for me personally. I’ll get to its place in history in a minute, but first I’ll say that for me this film is kind of a big deal since it introduced me to the world of classical music, a world that’s becoming increasingly hard to convey to today’s youths. Anyway, this film was my entry point into classical music and I haven’t looked back since.

            Unsurprisingly, Amadeus is about Mozart, more or less. It’s about Mozart as seen through the eyes of another composer, Antonio Salieri. We see Salieri as an old man in an insane asylum when a priest comes to visit him. Salieri then recounts his life, how he met Mozart, etc. He tells the priest that, through a fortunate turn of events (including his father’s death…), he was able to travel to Vienna, ‘city of musicians’. He was successful there, wanting to create music in service to God. All was well until he met Mozart. Salieri was confronted with a composer who far exceeded his abilities. Salieri believed God was talking through Mozart’s music and Salieri realized his own music paled in comparison. This was a shock to Salieri which was only amplified by the fact that Mozart was a ‘sensual’ man, a lover of sex and wine, etc. Why, Salieri asked himself, had God made this ‘monkey’ his instrument instead of me? The rest of the film shows Salieri and Mozart conversing and trying to get through their careers and lives, with Salieri desperately trying to conceal not only his passion for Mozart’s music, but also his hatred for the man.

I could spend several paragraphs swooning over the film’s technical achievements (which are vast) and the quality of the acting (which is great), but I’d rather discuss something else, something I believe is the key to this film’s success. What I find the most intriguing thing about Amadeus is the fact that it was still massively successful (winning 8 Oscars) despite not being historically accurate at all. Granted, not all historical films need to follow the history books to the letter to be successful, but the amount of changes that were made in Amadeus were pretty substantial. You can look up various articles detailing the differences. I’ll name one: Mozart’s laugh which, as you may recall, was kind of funny…or annoying…your mileage may vary. As seen in the trivia section on Imdb, ‘there are claims that [the laugh] was taken from “references in letters written about him”’. A quote by Robert L. Marshall follows stating there is no historical evidence that Mozart had such a laugh. Its use in the film is purely dramatic, because Salieri sees it as the gods mocking him.

So yeah, the film deviates quite a lot from reality, but I think these deviations and the way Amadeus turned out are precisely the reason why the film was so impactful at the time, as it was for me when I saw it in my early teens. The reason it was so successful (and still is) despite all the historical errors is because in the end it isn’t really a biographical film, but a film about the people behind the music. It doesn’t merely throw classical music at you and telling you to like it, but it shows Salieri obsessed with the transcendent nature of music and his frustration when he realizes he doesn’t have what Mozart has. The film conveys the notion of music being capable of expressing the inexpressible. This is why scenes like Salieri salivating over Mozart’s ‘originals’ have endured the test of time, because it’s not just about the music. It’s about the people behind it. This is where I think a documentary would have failed. Sure, it would have painted a more historically accurate portrait of Salieri and Mozart, but film is more easily capable of delivering an emotional impact. Instead of merely showing the lives of Salieri and Mozart, the central focus is their (particularly Salier’s) obsession with (Mozart’s) music. By telling the story through Salieri, we see Mozart through his eyes and we too are baffled and amazed by Mozart’s genius. This is what Amadeus does right more than anything: introduce audiences to classical music in a way that captures the imagination. That’s what it did for me. Like I said, this was my entry to classical music. In a spur of the moment, I told my parents I was going to compose a requiem like Mozart did. Naturally, I never did. I know little music theory and never seriously composed anything. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, but the important thing was that Amadeus made me that excited about classical music. I too wanted to experience the level of excitement and transcendence that Salieri experienced through Mozart’s music.

This all reminds me of Leonard Bernstein. He’s of course considered to be one of the great conductors, but what I think proves that claim more than anything was his ability to convey his passion to the audience. Just watching him conduct is an experience in and of itself. Again it’s not necessarily the music itself that excites, but the people who bring it to life and it’s this major achievement of Amadeus that makes it a classic and a must-watch. Well…there it is.