Amadeus
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Hello everyone, today I will be writing about the 1984 movie Amadeus directed by Milos Forman, if you haven’t seen this movie please be aware that parts of it will be spoiled or revealed during this discussion. Named after the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the movie follows Mozart’s arrival and life in Vienna as his colleagues, mainly a man called Antonio Salieri, feel threatened by his success.
The movie starts with Salieri trying to commit suicide while confessing to his killing of Mozart, shortly after Salieri is joined in his prison cell by a priest to which Salieri tells him his story and relation to Mozart. This recollection starts with a teenage Salieri yearning for a life defined by music, resulting in him becoming the foremost opera composer for the Emperor in Vienna, this leads him to his first meeting with Mozart. In this meeting Salieri realises the childishness of Mozart while he is amazed by the beauty of his music. This continues through Mozart’s rise as a composer, Salieri becoming ever more jealous and admiring of his work.
The greatest use of literary devices by Forman is ambivalence, he uses it constantly from the beginning when Salieri recognises the widespread recognition of Mozart’s music until the climax when Mozart dies. The most apparent device, foreshadowing, is used in the first minutes of the movie where Salieri is in a mad or crazed state to which he tries to kill himself and confesses to killing Mozart. This both foreshadows Salieri’s “killing” of Mozart but also the ambivalence of his feelings towards Mozart and the ultimate meaning of the film.
One of my favourite parts of the film is the slow pace and drawn out second and third acts, they act perfectly as to raise the tension and feel the characters’ slow deterioration. This helps is the way the message and meaning is conveyed, being how an envious and ambivalent feeling towards Mozart breaks both of the main characters.
In the end, Amadeus is a stark reminder of the degenerative effects of envy and the unbearable weight of immense talent. As both Salieri and Mozart drive each other mad the viewer can’t help but feel a mutual sense of empathy for the situations of both characters.