#498: Amadeus
A rockstar biopic with everything but the rock.
Initial release: September 1984
Director: Miloš Forman
It’s no secret that I am not a fan of so-called classical music. The works of the Great Composers of the 18th and 19th centuries — from Bach to Beethoven and beyond — are not something I go out of my way to listen to. But there’s a lot to be said about the personalities that composed these songs, young geniuses who became sex symbols in their own right, packing opera houses and drawing fans attracted to more than just their musical prowess. In a way, they were the original rock stars, who faced many of the same challenges as the modern rock musician — and often burned out in much the same way.
Which brings us to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, one of the greatest geniuses of music, a child prodigy with an enormous portfolio that covered a variety of genres, performing to adoring audiences before finally passing away at the rather young age of 35. It’s a career that makes the bones of a good biopic; Amadeus, the masterpiece of Miloš Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The People vs. Larry Flynt, and Man on the Moon) takes those old bones and dresses them up not as a staid textbook re-enactment of the life and times of Mozart, but as a much more human and accessible biopic about a perfectly likeable guy with a goofy laugh who knew he was a genius but didn’t know how to actually talk to people.
We see Mozart (played brilliantly by Tom Hulce) through the eyes of Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham,) court composer to Joseph II, ruler of the Holy Roman Empire. Using the framing story of an aged Salieri giving his confession to a young priest, the film retells how Salieri sometimes encouraged, sometimes sabotaged the career of Mozart, of whom he was equal parts jealous and in awe. Salieri believes himself to have killed Mozart, and so we trace the two men’s careers as they intertwine in interesting ways. Forman has created a film that’s just a little bit punk; Mozart’s powdered wigs are never like anyone else’s, always a little wild, sometimes even a little pink. In some ways, it feels like a symbol of the early 80s, slotting neatly into an era of films like 1979’s Elvis and 1986’s Sid and Nancy. Mozart’s music is, obviously, the driver of the film’s score, often serving to elevate Mozart himself; what may seem childish and meaningless when spoken by Mozart, a manchild with a drinking problem, is majestic when spoken by his music.
Like a lot of biopics, the film sacrifices accuracy for drama; at a critical juncture late in the film, Salieri (in costume) convinces Mozart that he is the ghost of the composer’s commanding, intimidating father and commissions Mozart to write a requiem. In actuality, it was commissioned by a local aristocrat grieving the loss of his wife. In the film, it’s this prank that sends Mozart on a downward spiral that eventually results in his death by exhaustion; the actual historical record is a little more vague as to what happened to him save that it was some sort of medical emergency. For some, Salieri’s portrayal as a jealous rival, perhaps even to the point of violence, borders on character assassination (especially a sequence included only in the director’s cut in which he attempts to get Mozart’s wife to perform sexual favors in exchange for putting in a good word with the Emperor for Mozart, which he later backs down on but not without shaming her for being willing to follow through on it;) but it’s worth pointing out that the historical Mozart himself resented that Salieri got more respect by nature of being Italian (Italian composers were seen as cooler back in those days) and he and his father both saw Salieri as leading a “cabal” of Italians to block his career progress. It’s difficult to really suss out the truth here, but the film seems less to suggest that Salieri was truly responsible for Mozart’s death, and more that Mozart simply wound himself up so tight in his grief that he broke down.
Still, though, as we can see with Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, sometimes accuracy isn’t really the point so much as it’s painting a picture of a historical figure, often in ways that illuminate an aspect of that character that others hadn’t considered. For Marie Antoinette (who, incidentally, was the sister of Joseph II) it was the fact that she was basically a teenager effectively exiled from home at a young age, surrounded by creepy adults who blame her for the king’s inability to produce an heir, and ultimately executed by a populace who despised her from day one. For Mozart, it’s about a young genius who lived beyond his means while struggling to find steady work, and whose ignominious end belied just how beloved he was.
