Milos Forman
Amadeus

Talent and genius. It is on this dichotomy of human nature that Amadeus is born and developed, a biographical play first and then a film about the great man from Salzburg, inspired by the Pushkin play "Mozart and Salieri". It is from the Russian poet's text that the original (apparently invented) opposition, the Salieri-Mozart clash, comes forth, with all the dramatic (and even more invented) aftermath that will follow: the first, a court composer at the peak of fame; the second, a restless rascal with the (inexplicable) gift of putting together heavenly melodies. Hence the consuming jealousy of the Italian, who, while recognizing the "genius" in the other—the rival against whom he cannot compete on equal notes—does not understand and does not yield to the why. This is the torment: in that childish "why him and not me?". It is precisely in Pushkin's text that Salieri conceives murder as the only possibility of salvation and of repositioning his figure on the highest step of the podium of immortality from which the other is unseating him with blows of immortal masterpieces. But in a dialogue between the two, on the nature of genius, Mozart poses the other's aspiration before yet another challenge and involuntary provocation: "Genius cannot commit murder."

Forman's film, endowed with a strong humorous charge, at least in the first part, brings to the extreme the concept of cosmic injustice, with a stunning Murray Abraham giving life to Salieri's (self-)destructive thoughts: he earns an Oscar (it feels like a posthumous reward for much suffering…) with the scene where, before throwing the crucifix into the fire, he vents his desperation, collecting in the blasphemous gesture the despair of all the "mediocres of the world": "Lord, if you didn't want me to celebrate your name with my music, why instill me with the desire to do so?". And to further highlight the contrast, Mozart-Tom Hulce gives life to a sort of jester, a young man who writes music by chance, not knowing what or who inspires him, one who chases after all the skirts, laughs like a little monkey, and one day ends up, who knows how, at court. Where in front of the sovereign and Salieri, who in his "honor" had prepared a welcome march, he has the audacity to improvise over it: "There's something wrong here... yes, like this, it sounds better, iiiiiiiiiiihhhhhhh", and down he goes, hopping with his fingers across the piano, producing notes written in the infinite score of his head ("why don't I have two heads?", he asks himself as he tries on wigs). A star is born: the emperor, an idiot (musically speaking, he "has no ear"), is dazzled by the prodigy, commissioning him an opera, then another, and others still, but woe is it to judge him ("beautiful music, but, how to say, too many notes"? - "could Your Majesty tell me exactly where?").
The name of Mozart fills the court theater. But the parable is brief, as brief as the life of Wolfy himself, as his wife calls him, the primary cause of his deranged finances. The subplot involves the relationship between Mozart father and son: the unresolved complexes of inferiority/recognition/guilt of the latter, who at the end of his career(-life) is literally devoured by the shadow cast by the sudden disappearance of the parent, a shadow sitting on the edge of the inclined plane and taking physical form, accelerating the final ruin and seizing what is left of his life: the statue in Don Giovanni, the mysterious man in black who returns from the underworld to commission him a Requiem, whom the film implies is Salieri himself.
The film's overflowing humor suddenly ceases, making way for unbearable tension. Even the weather changes, with long and gloomy days of rain, as if the sky itself is mourning someone dear to God. We, instead, sway like a pendulum: with Mozart, we experience an anguish that we feel is not ours but divine; it is with Salieri, however, that Forman confronts us, making us gaze upon our intimate grotesque reflection, the human baseness that unites all the mediocre and which is sublimated here in paying the unwitting rival to write a Mass for the dead without a deceased. And when he will have filled this word with flesh, we will pass off the work as our personal tribute to the "prematurely departed" genius, reaping the expected tribute of immortality. But destiny punishes Salieri-Oedipus again, deluding him into acting and using his "talent" to fulfill its inscrutable design and instead render the "genius" immortal: to gather at the bedside of a delirious Mozart the notes of the Requiem dictated aloud ("Did you understand?" - "Too fast, too fast, I don't understand, I don't understand...") before he dies and no longer leaves any trace.

As an instrument of God, Salieri will not draw any benefit from his plot, but once his mission is nearly complete, he will be cast away like an old scrap, and while Mozart's body ends up in a mass grave wrapped in a black sack, he is punished with life, to conclude his days mad among the mad. An obsessed and mediocre old man, with one sole, useless talent: to regret the genius he never was. Amadeus begins right here.