Rarely can
a dark character be so well portrayed, captured and so compelling! I guess the
character of Antonio Salieri is so powerful that he makes Mozart's story filled
with intrigue. For those who aren't familiar, Salieri is a contemporary of
Mozart and is extremely jealous of Mozart's talent and fame. So intense is his
dislike that it consumes him and yet, he simply loves the music composed by
Mozart and acknowledges them to be miraculous and sees the hand of God through
Mozart. Despite his jealousy, he realises that God had indeed chosen Mozart to
compose music who is otherwise imperfect, lewd, vulgar and juvenile.
Unlike
other typical characters, his jealousy and animosity of Mozart soon
turns to anger with God himself and so his actions and manipulative moves are
all aimed at squaring off with God!! I simply loved the way the Director has handled
this strong emotion in a person and has so nicely brought out the fact that
anger, jealousy clouds and eventually consumes a person and he or she lose
their sanity. And so the story goes about how Salieri schemes to kill Mozart
and also get him to write his own requiem mass (mass for the dead) and plans to take
credit only to have the last laugh with God! But God has his own plans and
Mozart dies leaving the Requiem Mass unfinished. The movie ends with Salieri
confessing to his deeds to a Priest, as he is confined to an asylum for the
insane, for more than 30 years after the death of Mozart.
Salieri is bitter that God chose him to compose mediocre
music while he chose to bestow genius on Mozart! Such a brilliant capture of
how jealousy, hatred, can simply consume a person to insanity. Extremely compelling
