Never Seen It #319: Amadeus

All I wanted was to sing to Blog. He gave me that longing... and then made me mute. Why? Tell me that. If he didn't want me to praise him with watching 500 movies I've never seen before, why implant the desire? Like a lust in my body! And then deny me the talent?

Amadeus

1984

Miloš Forman

Thanks to all those who heard the tune and wrote down the composition. See the notes below.

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Brianna

2024 gave us Timmy Chalamet as Bob Dylan. Rami Malek got major award buzz playing Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody. Jennifer Lopez had her breakout role as Selena. Hell, even John C. Riley got his biopic licks in as Dewey Cox in parody Walk Hard. I could go on, but I think you get the point. 

The musical biopic is a lane Hollywood seems to enjoy revisiting often, it seems. I kinda thought it was a relatively recent phenomenon, but little did I know, before them all, there was one that climbed to the top of Hollywood acclaim: Amadeus. 

The 1984 flick won 40 of the 53 awards it was nominated for that year, including multiple Best Pictures and an Academy Award to F. Murray Abraham as Antonio Salieri. But did it deserve the accolades?

Hell yeah, it did. This movie is awesome and I had a blast.

For one, it doesn't take itself too seriously in the way you'd think a movie about Mozart would. (So unseriously that I suppose "biopic" is a bit of a stretch, but whatever.) Now I usually do a Wikipedia plot section refresher of a movie before starting my write-up. This time around, I was struck by how so much of the movie gets lost on paper.

Sure, it mentions how immature and silly Salieri thought Mozart was. But can it capture the insane sound of his laugh or the absolutely hilarious way he botched every bow he gave? Abraham may have gotten the Oscar (duh, a masterclass), but Tom Hulce was just as enchanting. I'm well aware his Mozart was probably not a representation of the real one, but who even cares. What easily could have been a good movie about a heated rivalry, instead became epically fun in its stars' hands. 

For all my "Mozart is inherently boring" talk, I do have to give the man props for whipping up a great tune. The three hours I spent in 19th century Vienna this week were enlightening. For every "oh THIS is Mozart moment," there was a song or opera I'd never heard before, and it's all music at its finest. There was a moment when Salieri was describing Mozart's Gran Partita, first the oboe and then the clarinet. It's probably one of my favorite moments of the film, that and the composition writing the night of Mozart's death. In both scenes, you get it. Mozart really is that good, it'd drive his competition mad.

And for that, 4.5 / 5 pukes

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Joe

What to make of the continual flip-flopping of Antonio Salieri? That's how I interpreted it at first. He was always praising the music of Mozart but then doing everything he could to be a little shit toward him. Maybe I was tired of it because it relied too heavily on the narration. F. Murray Abraham did a good enough job with his acting, especially his facial expressions, that maybe we didn't even need to framing device of the close-to-death Salieri explaining his rivalry with Mozart to the priest.

But that's the thing with the framing device, maybe it is needed so that you can start to understand that the central rivalry is not actually between Salieri and Mozart, but is instead between Salieri and god. And depending on your belief system, maybe you could, like me, view "hating god" as "hating yourself." In other words, Salieri was deeply flawed, and in hating those qualities about himself (jealousy, scheming), he took it out on god. Artistically speaking, that makes him a pretty compelling character.

Besides feeling an empathy for hating god, I think the thing that I'll take away from this film is the idea that art can inspire, and that art occasionally, when it's good enough, overshadows literally everything else. Salieri hated Mozart, and yet he was enthralled by Mozart's art. This made for an intriguing internal struggle, but you can see time and again that the art always wins out. I like that Mozart was kind of a piece of a shit, a loser for the most part, pretty annoying to most people he hangs out with, and YET he is at his best when he is creating. Amadeus itself being art (high valued art, having one eight Oscars including Best Picture), it's pretty easy to see that this is one of the main points that it's trying to make to its audience. Art is worth it.

It... well, not to quote the royal court yes-men too much, but art ennobles us, when we engage with it. The most tragic flaw within Salieri is that he didn't feel god when engaging with his own art. The biggest misunderstanding of this movie would be to say that Salieri wasn't good at what he did. He was a great composer, good enough to be the personal composer of the emperor. He wasn't Mozart, so he felt inferior, and cursed god because of it, but he was good. There's room to find the divine in any art, even the "vulgar" (as Mozart self-deprecatingly calls himself), and especially if it's something you care about and pour your heart into. 

And I appreciate how this is a conversation we can have about a really good, really well-made movie. It's beautifully shot, reminiscent of Barry Lyndon at its best (visually speaking, which ended up being my main takeaway from that movie anyway). Abraham and the Animal House dude are so enigmatic in their respective parts. I struggled a little bit to maintain interest throughout (the fucking director's cut'll do that to ya), but the scenes that were good were really good. The ending especially stuck the landing well, with Salieri finally giving into Mozart's craft wholeheartedly, and then "absolving" the other patients, and therefore god, atoning for his own sins in the process.

I felt ennobled, in other words. Feels good.

GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5

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Allison

I don't think I'm a particularly tough critic; I can find intrinsic value in a lot of things. But most things just don't floor me anymore. Is it ennui? Anhedonia? I used to like things. Do you remember feelings? Does your blog editor check in with you after a slew of middling movie and album ratings? Don't worry, blog fam, I actually loved this one. Thank god. Speaking of, "Amadeus" translates to "love of God." There's your film title and thesis in one shot. Nice work.

I sometimes struggle with period pieces and biopics. I have this annoying urge to google everything: "Did that really happen?" With Amadeus, I really didn't care about the film's historical accuracy; it was good, and I had fun. Salieri is introduced as an unreliable narrator; he's literally in an asylum, so I can forgive any historical inaccuracies for the sake of good storytelling. A film trope that I love, maybe one that has become a bit tired lately but is applied well here, is that of the unwitting rube who, by happenstance and begrudging politeness, is forced to listen to a narrator for hours, days, or even years ("and that, kids, is how I met Salieri"). The poor priest's face transitions from captivation to boredom to abject exhaustion and finally to bewilderment. It's a bold move to portray bored characters listening to your narrator, especially when we're creeping up on a three-hour runtime.

Luckily, the performances keep this film from feeling too long or self-indulgent (I opted for the theatrical cut, sorry, Milo). F. Murray Abraham's obsessive Salieri is a perfect foil for Tom Hulce's frenetic Mozart. Since Salieri is telling the story, Hulce's performance is not a portrayal of Mozart: the man, but rather Mozart: the object of Salieri's envy and desire. This Mozart is fantasy and memory muddled in the mind of a dying, bitter old man. Salieri, skulking in the shadows, quietly dripping with disdain (and maybe lust), and Mozart, bouncing off the walls, blissfully unaware of his friend's betrayal. Does Salieri actually betray or sabotage Mozart, or does Salieri only remember it that way? Yes, he had fantasies of killing Mozart and stealing his work, but he admits to the priest that he hadn't planned that far. Even in death, Mozart doesn't need Salieri's help. In the end, old sad-sack Salieri is such a forgettable footnote in the annals of music history that he is compelled to weave a tale of how he was far more instrumental in Mozart's life than he really was. Is Salieri absolved in the end? He seems to think so. And maybe that's all that matters.

A few final thoughts on Tom Hulce. He is such a cutie patootie in that light pink wig. I just love a weird little guy. I found his performance so captivating. I get why F. Murray Abraham won each acting award they were both nominated for, but it's a shame Tom Hulce doesn't act more. Or sing more! He's the voice of Disney's Quasimoto for crying out loud. I also just found out that he was a producer on A Home at the End of the World, a 2004 Colin Farrell movie that is just okay, but is based on one of my absolute favorite books. This is a Tom Hulce fan account now.  

In short. We love a short king.

5/5

Right up there with Mac and Me. We are so back.

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GROUP AVERAGE GRADE: 4.33 pukes out of 5

But the group average grade should be "F"... for "F. Murray Abraham rocks!" Agree? Disagree? Meet us in the comments.

(NEXT TIME: Frank leads us through the rare Film Club documentary Gates of Heaven.)