June 11, 2013

My take on the movie - Amadeus

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