"Amadeus" 40th Anniversary Review: An Undisputed Titan of Genius Filmmaking

A bitter composer and his legendary rival with a penchant for fart jokes. What could go wrong?

May 1, 2022

“All men are equal in God’s eyes.”

Italian composer Antonio Salieri hears the words from a young priest counseling him after a failed suicide attempt, an aim at self-inflicted justice for what he claims is his murder of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Armed with a life riddled with experiences that dictate otherwise, Salieri smirks at the priest before asking a simple question:

“Are they?”

The answer is Amadeus, a fictional account of a one-sided rivalry between Salieri and the famed Austrian composer, whose neglect for the virtue of his profound talent so heavily combats Salieri’s worldview that he seeks to destroy the man entirely.

On the surface, it is a tell-tale story of jealousy, of a man so consumed by his desires that he plots to undo his rival and claim the glory he believes is rightfully his. Simmering beneath is a movie less about the pitfalls of envy than the folly of rationalizing the divine.

It’s the very foundation of Christianity: everything is the Lord’s will. It’s a concept often cited but rarely questioned, and the narrative weight of Amadeus is in Salieri’s attempts to seek answers definitively not accessible to man. As a young boy in the hills of Italy, he envisions a life of fame and immortality through the vessel of musical genius, appealing to God for the brilliance necessary to turn his dream into reality.

This is what Amadeus offers us: an examination of what our offers mean in the face of the divine. Is the pursuit of our ends as revenge for our imagined slights justice or madness?

It stages Salieri’s disdain through quiet dramatics that color the two men in this one-sided ideological conflict. Salieri begins the film consumed by mystique, confounded by brilliance that seems nearly superhuman. He is eager to come face-to-face with the man responsible for all he wants for himself until he sees him with his own eyes: a prancing buffoon sneaking away from his concert to play childish word games with a girl. He is vulgar, crude, and utterly devoid of manners.

This? This is the means through which God seeks to inundate the world with the very thing for which Salieri has begged him to be the vessel?

When Mozart’s wife seeks Salieri’s aid in securing her husband's employment, he emptily entertains her. Only when he is confronted with Mozart’s genius does he buckle, quickly shuffling through his work, all first drafts and sole copies. When Constanze asks if it is worthy, Salieri turns to her, floored by the question:

“It’s perfect.”

For all his musical bloodlust, Salieri cannot shake his appreciation for Mozart’s genius. His envy does not cloud his objectivity. His attempts to usurp Mozart’s talents for himself cannot undo his wonderment. Salieri himself is an acclaimed composer, respected in his field and given influence and power as a result. He does not need to envy Mozart the way he does, but he cannot help it because we cannot help it.

The monstrous slugger, lasering drives into the outfield gaps or belting bombs into the left-field bleachers, cannot help but dismiss his achievements in the face of greater talent. He can hit 49 home runs: this means nothing compared to 50. Our hunger for supremacy can never be satiated, and for all our public declarations to the contrary, those risen above us in our field are not admirable but enviable.

Why else would hitters shoot steroids? Why else would teams station secret agents in the outfield offices, peering in between the catcher’s legs to steal signs? Ambition always turns to madness, but Amadeus doesn’t rest on narrative laurels, leaving that idea drifting in the breeze: it cuts into it.

It isn’t enough that Salieri is driven mad, crying to the winds at the injustice or wailing in despair at his circumstances. He cannot comprehend why God would forsake a true servant, a man pure in his desire for musical sovereignty, for a man so oblivious to the significance of his gift, even though he begrudgingly admits inferiority.

He is so transfixed by Mozart’s work that he takes in every performance of Don Giovani, although he is solely responsible for limiting the number of showings. He plots to manipulate Mozart through the death of his beloved father, paying him to pen a requiem mass that he intends to steal after he kills him upon its completion. Salieri routinely makes Mozart unattainable while insisting he consumes him, not unlike that slugger, mighty but not preeminent.

Yet, Amadeus succeeds not in these moments of callous trickery, but in presenting the other side of the coin. It doesn’t simply dissect resentment towards divine intention but shows why the very nature of it is foolish in the first place.

Mozart is all we perceive of those shrouded in privilege, blessed with abilities they seem not to appreciate. He is immature, oblivious to his good fortune. He is dedicated but stubborn, as though he’s above the laws of men. He refuses to submit his work to a committee of those who cannot understand his music because he knows he is better.

He does not work for what he earns, or appreciate the very concept of work altogether. He’s perfection personified, drafting operas without the need for edit or revision. Everything has been given to him, seemingly by the hand of God Himself. Why, then, is it wrong to scheme against them, when we are owed by right more than what we’ve been given?

Because we are wrong.

In the final scene, a sickly Mozart lies in his room, grasping to his final bursts of life, with Salieri at the foot of his bed. Determined to complete the Requiem, Salieri insists on taking his dictation, to which Mozart agrees. His instruction is clear, concise, and unbreaking, the piece already built in his mind, needing only a wave of the quill to bring it to life. When Salieri questions Mozart, the dying composer responds in frustration, not because his genius is not understood, but because to him, his genius isn’t genius at all.

In this moment, where an embittered rival’s loathing melts away in the face of greatness, the veil is peeled back on Mozart. All his defensiveness, his insistence on his perfection, wasn’t hubris. It was a truth of music that only he could understand because he alone possessed the power to comprehend it. We know this.

Mozart does not.

All the times his operas got criticized, the number of notes questioned, the nature of music concerning story dismissed was so confounding to him not out of arrogance, but confusion. It was so plain to see a man both blind and deaf could know it.

Salieri, for his faults, is so enveloped in grasping the moment, keeping up with all its offerings, that he forgets his hatred entirely. Only the music matters. The man who conceives it, for the night, is king.

The movie itself is darkly cinematic, from the dim operas to the tense musical artistry, lit only by candlelight as night creeps in through the windows. It is a brilliant assist to be sure, but an assist only.

Amadeus, for all its visual splendor and technical merit, is what so many films try to be but fail at becoming: the answer, thought out, measured, and balanced, in this case to the very question Salieri has spent his life trying to answer:

Are all men equal in God’s eyes?

As Salieri leaves the stunned priest in his room, having reworked his failures to instill meaning to his life, branding himself the patron saint of mediocrities, the answer is clear:

It doesn’t matter.