Amadeus [Director's Cut] (1984)

PG, but that's probably for not the director's cut.  There's is straight up full nudity in this movie.  Also coupled with the fact that the movie is about drunkeness, debauchery, and all kinds of ill-behavior.  But I do love that, technically, Amadeus has the same MPAA rating as Wonka, a movie I desperately tried to find something inappropriate to put in this section.

DIRECTOR:  Milos Forman

Is Milos Forman one of the greatest directors that ever lived?  Honestly, how does Amadeus hit so hard?  I would call Amadeus a fluke, but One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is one of my favorite movies ever.  I've seen Amadeus before and was impressed by it then.  But watching it this time?  Oh my goodness.  I didn't remember how good this movie was.  And a lot of that comes from my watching of The Prestige.

The Prestige, upon second viewing, knocked my socks off.  It was significantly better than I remember it being.  The ending still disappointed me a bit, but I wrote it off as something that I couldn't do any better.  I didn't have a better ending than what Nolan presented to me and so I made peace with the idea that The Prestige is better in existence with an imperfect ending than not existing at all.  But Amadeus does The Prestige, but actually sticks every single moment in the movie on such a perfect and nuanced level that I'll probably have a hard time talking about it.  If you are one to pray for something that exists outside of space and time, pray that I have the words to write about a movie that, at its core, is fundamentally about a perversion of faith.

There's something really appealing about a distilled emotion put into film.  Now, before people lose their minds, I understand that Amadeus is sooner historical fiction than it is "based on a true story."  From what I understand, Salieri and Mozart weren't from the same era.  The play / movie shoves the two into each other's atmospheres to create a sense of intense tension. But Amadeus lives and thrives on the notion that one character is constantly at war with his own vices until he actively feeds that vice.  When I was looking for a picture above, I regret that I didn't have F. Murray Abraham as Salieri. Nothing had a high enough resolution to put in that thing that maintained the proper aspect ratio.  I'm not saying that Tom Hulce didn't deliver.  He absolutely crushed that role.  But the protagonist of this story is Salieri.  Again, "protagonist" doesn't mean "hero".  Salieri is absolutely not heroic, nor does he pretend to be. It's clearly stated in the fact that Salieri's framing device is that of a confession that eventually gets perverted into an opportunity to brag about his sin.

Forman doesn't allow the emotion conveyed to just be jealousy.  When I was growing up, I remember a lot of my religion class (ahem...theology classes) mentioned that pride is the greatest sin.  Intellectually, I understood what was meant by pride.  "Excessive pride."  It's the devil's number one sin.  But part of that always rubbed me the wrong way.  It seemed so Puritanical.  I always thought that a fear of pride led to horrible self-esteem and suicides.  But Amadeus exhibits exactly the kind of pride that would be considered sinful.  Salieri's sin of pride and jealousy comes from the notion that God somehow owes Salieri.  It makes sense.  Salieri, for all of his religious upbringing and devotion, still has that understanding of faith as a child.  It makes sense.  I'm not saying I have faith figured out.  If anything, my faith life is a mess and I never understand what's going on with it.  But I do know that sometimes we have a very transactional relationship with faith.  It's kind of why I always get a little nervous when I see people who have a strong sense of faith, but a contentious relationship with the necessary sense of reason to contrast.

From Salieri's persective, he's done everything right.  The moment that his father dies after his prayers is a formative moment.  From that child's perspective, God had favored Salieri.  He brought his wrath to an unholy situation and removed the obstacle that would have made Salieri God's instrument.  That kid's entire fate was written for him in that moment.  As long as Salieri pushed harder and harder, God would make him the greatest composer that ever lived.  In any frame of reference, he couldn't imagine not only not being the greatest composer that ever lived, but he wasn't even the greatest composer in the room.  There's something incredible depressing about being second best.  I had the same conversation with God.  (It's funny, because when I had that conversation in prayer, I honestly thought that I was the second best option to a lot of people.  Now I'm lucky to make a leaderboard.) 

Golly, when I first saw this movie all those years ago, I must have raised some red flags about faith.  Part of what makes Amadeus so compelling is that Salieri, while being completely in the wrong, is so sympathetic when it comes to his views on God.  If anything, he's a really nuanced criticism of the relationship that people have with God.  The scene where he burns the crucifix is not the loss of faith that it normally would read in most movies.  If anything, it's a perverted solidification of faith because it is an open declaration of war on God.  I'm sure that most people would consider atheism to be a war on God.  But Salieri is something far more interesting in that moment.  Salieri sees himself as Job.  God has teased him and tortured him by putting Mozart in his circle of influence.  Listen, I've only seen the director's cut.  I imagine the scene where he manipulates Mozart's wife into offering herself to him is such a troubling scene.  It's so upsetting that I can't believe that this movie could exist in a PG version.  But it is in this moment, where in earnest prayer, he begs for God to write music through him.

There's a poem by Edward Taylor (I think!) called "Huswifery".  I just know it very well because I teach it in my American literature class.  In that poem, Taylor asks God to make Taylor a vessel for God's creation.  It's more in the form of a prayer, but it is this touching and earnest embracing of faith that Christians are supposed to have.  Salieri's prayer is a parallel prayer to Taylor's.  But the criticial difference is that Taylor claims that anything created through his art is exclusively the creation of God, Salieri can't divorce his pride from God's creation.  This scene, by the way, also makes me deep dive into what talent actually is.  As a guy who has basically become obsessed with the humanities, in the limited scale I've influenced anything with my creations, I have to categorize myself in an artist's community.  I like it when people like what I create.  It builds me up. Heck, I like it when people just read what I write, blog or other.  But there's very little that I did to make me exceptional.  To a certain extent, I'm working towards Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule, but that's all based on talent in conjunction with effort.  Salieri's prayer in that moment is that greedy tie to both accept that God is the author of his creations, but the pride that he cannot be the vessel that enters it into this world.

Part of Salieri's complexity also comes from the fact that he knows he is both the hero and the villain of the piece.  Mozart's behavior throughout the piece screams perversion.  It seems like the devil is using God's notes to advance his own place in society.  The offense, to a certain extent for Salieri, is that he's trying to bring back glorious music to divine origins. But so much of the film has Salieri pulling his head out of his butt and seeing Mozart for the man that he is.  If sin is a choice to do the evil, Salieri continues to sin throughout.  He attends all of Mozart's performances even though he is the one stymying his success.  He confesses to Mozart that his music is the greatest music ever created.  Often, there's a sense of love for this man.  But none of that trumps his own skewed sense of morality and pride.  It's a lot to take in.

Honestly, Amadeus may be the greatest deep dive into characterization I've ever seen.  I know, it mirrors the words that Salieri uses when describing Mozart's music.  But F. Murray Abraham was given an absolute cracker of a character to unpack in this story and absolutely delivers.  Today, his reputation is probably deservedly tarnished.  But in this moment in time, Abraham gave us one of the greatest character studies of all time.  It's honestly one of the greatest roles in history and that movie 1000% holds up.