Marval Movie

In my life, I've seen a lot of movies, some that excel in greatness, others that fall flat on their face and others that don't stand the test of time too well and their appeal is merely observing how much the dust has gathered since then. Amadeus is one of the closest movies that earn the right to be called perfect.

The movie starts with two servants entering a dark candlelit house, we hear a voice cry out "Mozart I'm sorry, I killed you." They knock on the door there is no reply, they try to tempt him out with some delicious cream then they hear a thud. One breaks down the door and we see an old man on the floor, razor in hand and throat slit, simultaneously we hear Mozart's 25th symphony.

We later learn that the old man is Antonio Salieri a composer who is second-rate at creating, but first-rate at appreciating and recognizing greatness. We see him in an insane asylum and a priest is brought in to hear his confession, he dismisses him, but the priest insists that he must confess to God to forgive him. Salieri agrees (if only to humor him), but before he does he plays the priest (as well as the audience) a sample of music. He plays, the priest does not recognize it "What is it?" the priest asks, "I wrote it" Salieri replies. He then plays another which like the last one goes over the priest's head, "is there no melody of mine you can recall?" Salieri says, then with a sly look he plays another piece and the priest recognizes it instantaneously and even hums along with it even when Salieri stops. The priest says that it's charming and that he was unaware that he wrote it, " I didn't" says Salieri " that was Mozart".

So Salieri confesses his sins to the priest and we are taken back to him as a young man and how he longed to be a great musician since his youth and how he only amounted to a mediocre one at best and listening to Mozart 's greatness only made his mediocrity stand out all the more.

Salieri is played by F. Murray Abraham and he plays him with great presence, we can look at the subtle expressions on his face as well as his body language and can tell what he thinks and how it effects him, the whole movie shows him in a battle with God, Mozart, and his own sanity. There are few performances that after over thirty years remains so fresh and vivid, I don't think I have ever seen a performance to this high a standard in my time watching movies.

We later meet Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at a party that Salieri attends and he is like an unattended child in a room full of adults. He chases his girlfriend around, even dragging her across the floor by her ankle and when Salieri discovers this is the musical prodigy that he has admired all his life the expression on his face is priceless. Salieri hates Mozart's personality so much that he calls him "the creature".

Later after Mozart's performance Salieri looks over Mozart's sheet of music and is very moved by its heavenly greatness, if you watch his face he is either weeping for its beauty or weeping because of his jealousy.

Mozart is played by Tom Hulce (Quasimodo in Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame). He plays Mozart as a genius who knows he is a genius, this leads him to take praise with much ease and taking criticism with virtually none. He has wild radical new ideas that he is so enthusiastic about and if you look at the wigs he wears they are more spiky and colorful than the others so in a society slow jazz players he's a hardcore punk (so to speak), his music is fast, radical and as one describes "too many notes" and lest we forget that ridiculous laugh.

By genre Amadeus is a costume drama, that's where there's a heavy emphasis on set and costume and they are usually some of the best looking movies that you'll ever see but the characters and the performances are as flat as an old Victorian painting that there based of. Here they move, the characters aren't stiff planks, they emote they have body language, they express and can talk. What I mean is in other movies their speech would be as stiff as their posture.

The movie is directed by Milos Forman (One Flew Over the Coco's Nest) and he knows how to use those gorgeous sets, the city of Prague where it was filmed as well as the actors. He and his writer, Peter Shafer (who wrote the stage play) give the characters and the story freedom to have fun, this is not a movie that grounds itself in being historically accurate to each meeting time at each location at each date. The point is the idea or the spirit, the joy of being a creative person, the ability to come up with ideas.

One of the main points of the movie is perfect. Salieri looks at Mozart's music and says its perfect and how if one note was changed or one phrase misspelled then it would all shatter. Conveniently this is also how I define perfect and how the movie plays, if you were to add or take away anything it would sis to be perfect and just about every frame of Amadeus needs to be there. But I myself don't believe in perfect, the world is not perfect (it spins on a tilted axis) I don't think there is a perfect building, painting, person nor a perfect film but there are some that come close and Amadeus is one of them. It's almost like one of Mozart's operas with great sound and beautiful images moving together in harmony.

There is a director cut of the movie. It is around thirty-five minutes longer and I don't see the point as I previously said if you add or take away anything then it will sis to be perfect, but I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't interested. I have not seen the entire directors cut but I've seen a few scenes, they are worth seeing but the selesai feature is a great movie as it is.

If I was asked to name the greatest movie of all time I wouldn't name my favorite, I would name the most well-made movies I've seen. Only a few films would make it like Citizen Kane, Singin in the Rain, Apocalypse Now and Amadeus.