On Amadeus

Tragedies are a source of comfort. As a schoolboy I preferred adventure stories and detective novels. Being swept off across Middle-earth or solving mysteries alongside Feluda was more appealing than a story of a well-intentioned hero who didn’t do anything right. I thought it pointless to read, watch, listen to a story of sorrow and death.

As I’ve aged, however, and have had to deal, repeatedly, with things not going my way or being uncomfortable, I’ve begun to appreciate tragedies, often more so than adventure stories. Where the latter allows the audience an escape from their mundanity to an exciting life, and the protagonist inspires the audience by overcoming their struggles; tragedies give the audience a form of articulation of their trials and tribulations, with the protagonist suffering for the average audience member, leading the viewer to conclude that, having seen the full extent of the tragedy, perhaps their life isn’t so bad. They can be more human than adventures.

The 1984 film Amadeus is biographical in skeleton, fictional in muscle. Set in late 18th and early 19th century Vienna, the film takes significant liberties in portraying the classical composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, and their fictional rivalry.

Salieri is a devout lover of God and music and thanks Him every time he finds inspiration. A court composer, he is a rich and influential man with many pupils and popular throughout the city. He has studied music all his life and became an ascetic to be where he is. People like him because he’s familiar, unchallenging, and mannered.

Mozart couldn’t be more different: he is always pursuing newness, challenging the audience, yet doesn’t struggle to find inspiration; it’s as if the music is fully formed in his head and all he does is take dictation. A talented prodigy, his music is so profound and divine Salieri claims him to be the voice of God. Yet for all his brilliance, Mozart is boastful, vulgar, obscene.

Salieri can recognise Mozart’s talent better than anyone, and thus recognise his own mediocrity. He knows all his music is insignificant and inconsequential. Here, he is every student, every disciple, every hard working creative struggling for originality, for inspiration, yet unable to be half as good as their idol. Mozart is an insult to him and his work, because he need not struggle to be better than him, he simply is; and it is Salieri’s curse, and his alone, to know that. Music is what he loves, what he’s given his life to, yet he cannot conjure up a note that feels true. Perfection is locked away in a gilded cage and all he can do is stare and long to be inside it. He’s not furious simply because Mozart is better than him, it’s because he wants to be him; and since he cannot do that, he must destroy him.

Mozart, on the other hand, is haunted by his father’s ghost, and finds his talent becoming his bane. He alienates his wife and friends, and drinks himself to near-death, hallmarks of a tortured genius. His last work is a Requiem Mass for his father, commissioned in secret by Salieri, who plans to play the Mass at Mozart’s funeral as a mournful ally; to be praised as a genius composer. But Mozart dies unceremoniously before finishing the work and his body is dumped in a mass grave; and Salieri eventually becomes senile and is admitted to a mad house.

The story is told as confession to a priest, after he pleads to Salieri, who has attempted suicide, that he ask God for forgiveness. As the story ends, however, Salieri declares himself the patron saint of mediocrities everywhere. Where Mozart, traditionally heroic, suffered for his music and perfection and died a solitary, tragic death; Salieri suffered, as a saint might, for all those frustrated with their averageness, jealous of those better than them, those ashamed of themselves, and those afraid of being just another footnote in history: he is the hero no one wishes to be.

The film is singular in its boldness, fullness, and complexity. It is not content to merely narrate the factual story of its characters or praise them; it creates a fresh interpretation, one more faithful to feeling than fact, yet not disrespectful to the latter. It is the internal story of every artist and creative, and is the closest cinematic equivalent of the opera as can be.

This essay previously appeared in the 14th issue of the Open Close Magazine (Print); openclosemag.com, and instagram.com/openclosemag