Amazing Amadeus

I saw "Amadeus" yesterday, after having heard of it forever. Since it is a 20 year old movie, I am not really going to review it now, but some portions of it astounded me, and I’d like to analyze why. The movie is an account of Mozart's life. It has 17th century Austrian noblemen and German sopranos speaking in chaste American English! In fact, cuss words, casual slang, and all that jazz (unintended!) results in a rather unconvincing rhetoric. Or that is what I thought, until I looked beyond that, and saw the reason why the film had won 8 academy awards in its time.

The movie is told as a story by one of Mozart’s contemporaries, a musician called Antonio Saileri. Salieri is shown as a Lucifer of sorts, in what proves to be one of the most interesting portrayals of the landscape of human aspirations. Although historians do not agree with the depiction of Salieri as Mozart's culprit and murderer, there is enough evidence to believe that he did thwart Mozart significantly. However, irrespective of its faithfulness to history (the writers of the play version denied any claim to authenticity) the film tells a compelling story.

The story is about the great and the trifle, the sublime and the petty, the magnificent and the pusillanimous -all in a single stroke. Salieri, born as a musical underdog, is scalded with the desire to be a musician, and worship God with his music. Mozart, with the indubitable makings of a genius, is backed by his musician father, Leopold, into a famous innings as a child prodigy. Salieri grows into a religious, devout Christian; Mozart, an uncultured, perverted boor. Salieri wears himself thin, praying for the voice of God to enter his soul. He works on his music relentlessly, until he becomes a court composer of the Emperor of Vienna. To the untrained ear, Salieri is the epitome of classical music. Salieri himself, however, is painfully aware of his music does not even compare to Mozart’s mesmeric melodies. When he meets Mozart for the first time, he expects to “see” the genius in his being. Although the movie does not dwell on it, it is interesting how a certain class and bearing is associated with the word “genius”, despite the obvious lack of correlation between ability and social adeptness. It therefore, comes as a rude shock to see an “infantile, vulgar, boastful” person possessing the genius of Mozart.

Salieri’s intense grievance, as he feels that God betrayed him, is expressed movingly. He complains bitterly, “You manifest yourself in a child of obscenity and crudity, and give me, only enough caliber to recognize your incarnation…”. The line strikes one, because of the truth it touches upon. The unhappiest people are not those who do not have any talent or caliber, in fact, they are blissfully unaware of their relative positions in the world. The unhappiest are those, who have just enough capacity and keenness to know what it means to be great, and that they can never get there.

Salieri decides to wage a battle against God, and makes it his business to crush Mozart. So Mozart makes his music, in the quest of sublimity, while Salieri does everything in his power to keep him unemployed and unrecognized. The contrast between one man’s pursuit of great things, and another man’s pursuit of petty trifles is dramatic. Salieri speaks of the astounding brilliance of Don Giovanni, and in the same breath says how he ensured that it did not play more than 5 times in Vienna. Each of those 5 times he goes to watch that historical opera, and weeps for every line that he should have composed but could not.

In one of the most moving scenes in cinema, is depicted the contrast between the sheer excellence of Mozart, as he dictates the complex interplay of notes in his requiem, and the dull, halting mediocrity of Salieri as he grapples with the speed and fury of genius. Both are moved to tears-Mozart, because of the intensity of his creative process, which is causing him physical pain and literally killing him; Salieri, due to the frustrating medley of inspiration, awe and smallness that he feels, since he is knowingly killing this manifestation of divinity.

So, who wins? In the physical sense, Salieri ensures that Mozart dies a pauper, and is buried in a pauper’s grave. However, in his life after Mozart, he watches his own music fade away from people’s minds, and dies the death of ignominy and anonymity every day. While Mozart’s music lives on, centuries later. Salieri confesses his crime to a priest, and admits that in the battle between God and him, although he destroyed God’s incarnation, he still feels God won.

The movie is a remarkable account of human fallibility in the form of Salieri, and human ascent in the form of Mozart. For the same reason, it is at once uplifting and demeaning.