Review of Amadeus (1984) by Cindy I — 22 Feb 2011

History accuracy? Fuck accuracy. This is better than real history, this is AMADEUS! The story of jealousy and personal rivalry of a composer who would have been world wide famous if he were born in a time before Europe knew Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Composer Antonio Salieri tells his life story of his immaculate inspiration to become the greatest composer the world has ever known, and how he slowly falls into jealousy and rage as his talent becomes crushed in comparison to the young and rebelious Mozart. Salieri goes mad and blames God for his misery because even though he has the passion to create music, he knows he can never be better than Mozart. This movie completely took me by surprise. Amadeus is an incredable character study set into a very different and artistic enviroment, where music composers are as big as movie stars and Mozart is Marlon fucking Brando. This movie is not just intriguing, but very entertaining and often hilarious because of the bizzar enviroment with suttle preformances, with the exception of Tom Hulce's preformance as bat shit crazy Mozart.

The look of this movie is utterly overwhelming. This is a Vienna where fashion is everything to the upper class, and man do they go over the top. The costume design, set design, art direction, lighting, EVERYTHING in the cinematography is impossible to imagine how it was accomplished. This is deffinitely one of the most impressive looking period piece epics I have ever seen. Though everything in this movie might look over the top to the point where it's inaccurate...... who cares? This movie presents an amazing world of fashion and colour and art and music, this movie is better than an accurate period movie, it's cinema art gold. But in case your wondering, the pacing and editing of the movie keeps an attracting flow that makes the movie thuroughly entertaining. The mix of imagery, the cinematography, the music and editing of the scenes makes for an entertaining movie.

Winning a total of 8 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Amadeus is a feast for the eyes and the mind. This is a great character study movie that has earned a great reputation over the years. Don't be drawn away because it's a movie about Mozart, it's cringingly hilarious and dramatic that will surprise you as well if you have not seen it yet. Amadeus is one you cannot miss and you won't regret watching it.