MY TAKE ON A CLASSIC: AMADEUS (1984)

This is my little tribute to the man folks, as well as to the people who were good enough at heart to make a movie about the prodigy...

CLASSIC MOVIE

OPERATIC TO EPIC PROPORTIONS

MOVIE: AMADEUS (1984)
DIRECTOR: MILOS FORMAN (Based on a play by PETER SCHAFFER)
CAST: MURRAY.F.ABRAHAM, TOM HULCE, ELIZABETH BERRIDGE, JEFFREY JONES
RATING: ***** (GREAT MOVIE)

A Saul Zaentz production, AMADEUS directed by Milos Forman, has a tagline that speaks it all:

THE MAN...
THE MUSIC….
THE MADNESS...
THE MURDER...
THE MOTION PICTURE…

THE MAN: "'The Man' wrote his first concerto when he was four, his first symphony at seven, and a full-fledged opera at twelve!" exclaims a childishly-jealous Salieri. He plays his piano blindfolded, writes his notes without a single correction. "The music's here, inside my head. The rest is scribbling, bibbling and bibbling", says the man himself. He doesn't make copies of his notes, runs after his would-be wife in a public gathering, cuts across aristocrats' speeches, and says to his rival quite innocently, "How can you rewrite an opera that's already perfect?!". The character sketch clearly shows that this man's genius's incarnation...

THE MUSIC: Antonio Salieri (Abraham) unfolds AMADEUS as a masterful flashback-confession to a priest, housed in a madhouse. A rival of Mozart (Hulce), Salieri, whose music’s been made mediocre by that of Mozart, can’t help marveling at his music all the same. Salieri accepts grudgingly his mediocrity to the priest in a comic-sequence involving the enchanting Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. Conductor John Strauss and Forman then provide a treat of Mozart’s unforgettable, including the bold Marriage of Figaro, self-exposing Don Giovanni, and an excitingly-rendered Magic Flute along other prominent compositions. The man’s ingenuity is near-Mozart’s when he strengthens an already heavy sequence of Mozart feverishly dictating notes from his sickbed to a persistent Salieri, for his own requiem, with the music playing in the background the same way as it builds inside the prodigy’s brain.

THE MADNESS: AMADEUS is madness: Mozart is chief of all as the uncouth, indecent and eccentric prodigy, as he cackles at his own jokes, farts while imitating Salieri’s music in front of him and points out daringly to Duke Joseph II “I’m a vulgar man, sire… But not my music”. Salieri is mad as he calls the miracle that made his life worth was his father’s death, and as he later contradicts by saying that the very reason god staged the miracle was to make him a representative of the mediocre. The Duke’s mad as he enjoys Mozart’s raving. The movie’s evolution in itself is a cumulative craze of Forman, Schaffer, Hulce and Abraham for the man: It’s pure fanfare and devotion that’s the movie’s fervour.

THE MURDER: Or rather the rivalry: Not between the two composers, but between Salieri and Jesus Christ, who is accused by the former for “Choosing the wrong man to sing his song”. Salieri not just wants him to win, but for Mozart to lose. The fever hits a high as Salieri chucks an idol of Christ into the fireplace as the evil creeps into his mind. The Thesaurus has no adjective to describe the murder: Cold-blooded is too mild a word. Salieri uses Mozart’s guilt of neglecting his father by his exploit of the former’s party-attire, commissioning Mozart to write his own Requiem mass. “Asking him to write the requiem was easy… The killing was the difficult part. How do you kill a man?” is what Salieri narrates to a petrified Priest. Mozart drinks, drains himself, and overworks to lead to his own death, which instills guilt in Salieri. “32 years of torture”, he says.

THE MOTION PICTURE: AMADEUS is a cinematic idol. It’s perfection in every sphere clogged into an opera for the screen: The cast enact the opera with absorbing performances from Berridge (As Stanzie, Mozart’s childish wife), and Jones (As the stone-facedly animated Duke), while the crew compose, conduct, and sing the chorus. The film swept the 1984 academy awards with 8 right-royal wins, including Director, Actor, Film, Sound Editing and of course, Music along with adapted screenplay and two others. The only combat might’ve been the inside one between the two leads: The sole victory for Salieri to cheer for…