I just watched Amadeus(1984) on Netflix(SPOILERS: It's Wonderful), and I seem to recall hearing over the years ppl talk about the character Salieri(entirely ahistorical by the way, but the setting is simply that: A frame for telling a Good Story, which it does beautifully) as a man poisoned by envy, but my immediate reaction was that it's a movie about a man poisoned by pride.
His father accurately describes to him how Salieri's idol, Mozart, is abused by His father as "a trained monkey" to enrich and enfame HIMSELF, and hears only a denial of his own dreams for a career in music.
His father dies at a family meal, and Salieri sees only God answering his prayers for that career by striking his father down to remove him as an obstacle and free up his fortune to pay for that career. He doesn't spend a single instant on what condition that might leave his relatives, dependent on him and his inheritance for survival, in.
He looks at HIS OWN lifetime of hardwork and study and discipline and monumental success and sees only God favoring HIM, Salieri, God's Special Little Boy. Not one single instant given to considering HE made that for himself; HE wanted it, HE achieved it, HE suffered through the toil and struggle to make it real. No, it's not enough to humbly recognize his own agency: He Must Be God's One and ONLY Instrument; God's Chosen Voice on Earth.
He goes to a concert of Mozart offered by his Patron, the Prince-Achbishop of Salzburg, finds hundreds of people there drawn to and moved by Mozart's music just as HE is, and expects himself, Magically, to pick the man out of the crowd! No consideration that he doesn't know him, that the crowds are massive and obscuring, that what he is asking of himself is godlike knowledge.
There, secretly and by accident, he witnesses a young couple in a moment of juvenile, playful, and occasionally vulgar intimacy, only for the young man involved to be revealed as Mozart himself when he hears his music playing without him and rushes off. Salieri recoils at this: How can MOZART not be what SALIERI expects?!?!?! He doesn't spend one single instant thinking about the fact that this is how the man acts IN PRIVATE, not in public; not one single instant on the possibility that someone so different from himself might have lived a VERY DIFFERENT LIFE than he did; not had an inherited fortune as he did; the freedom to CHOOSE his life as he did; the SATISFACTION in his Life of being allowed to succeed on his own term, as he did.
After the performance he reads Mozart's sheet music, immediately sees its genius and innovation and beauty, and just as immediately rejects it as a fluke because HOW could that "CREATURE"(again the arrogance; denying him even his humanity merely because he, Salieri, finds his manner On First Meeting and Under Secret Surveillance distasteful) create such music, so beautiful it borders on divine? Again: not one instant spared to how Mozart has been FORCED TO MAKE MUSIC SINCE HE WAS AN INFANT, that it has been conditioned into him like Breathing; not a Smidgen of the barest humility needed to recognize that WORK and MAN are TWO SEPARATE THINGS and that HIS Feelings about either are NOT their reality, but HIM.
Again and Again and Again the movie shows us this: shows us Salieri interpreting everyone around him through the lens of his own life and mind, casting himself as the Protagonist of the World and Only Person in his every interaction, CONVINCED that the only story, the only LIFE!, worth telling or knowing, or indeed capable of even happening, is his own. Not One Thought spared, Ever!, for the interiority, context, and motivation of others. To the point that he can only interpret Mozart's "talent"(Read: The hard-taught Product of his childhood of constant Abuse) as GOD Picking a FIGHT WITH HIM(I mean: The GALL of that. The Utter self-involvement to think THE AUTHOR AND PILOT OF THE UNIVERSE created a whole-ass-other-life just to mock you; that THE OMNIPOTENT WILL BEHIND ALL THINGS ~gave~ you a whole-ass life of success and fulfillment just so it could, halfway through, piss on your feet about it).
Indeed, to the point that he can't even understand HIMSELF anymore. There's a part in the movie where, interpreting the hurt a diva he likes collaborating with felt at learning Mozart was affianced as evidence that they'd had sex(Salieri himself is "celibate" as part of the "deal" he thinks he struck with god for his success[again-again: The Gall. As if God were some fishmonger in the market and his beautiful life were a fresh trout he bought]), he concocts a plan to cuckold Mozart by extorting sex from his wife in exchange for influencing the Emperor to give Mozart a royal position. But of course: Salieri is "celibate". He has NO IDEA AT ALL what to do with a person who wants to have sex with him. He LITERALLY PRAYS TO GOD for her not to show up he's so scared of the encounter and when she does, he's struck to silence; unable to say anything; unable to take the lead she, trembling, expects him to take because HE IS EXTORTING THIS FROM HER; HORRIFIED as she, embarrassed unsure and scared but ready to do this thing she obviously abhors out of love and necessity for their family, undresses for him there wanting to get the sordid ordeal done. The only act he can muster: having backed away from her nudity in terror as if from DRACULA HIMSELF and stumbled into his piano, he rings a bell for his porter to remove her(of course, he's embarrassed by what he walks into and runs away). She cries herself to sleep on her marriage-bed racked to her soul by what she almost did; by the humiliation his cruelty and cowardice and refusal to see other people as PEOPLE JUST LIKE HIM has made her live through. He is Publicly as Staunch and True an admirer and Friend to Mozart as he is Privately his ruin, and can never Once -- not for a SINGLE MOMENT -- see through his own ego enough to recognize the obsessive DESIRE and FASCINATION(yes I am choosing this word for its latin associations) for Mozart which drives him. He drives himself MAD hoping for revenge from a dead person, Mozart, who in life never saw him as anything less than a kind colleague and supportive friend, and never felt anything less than fondness and love for him. This really cannot be stressed enough: Salieri spent his life boiling himself in hatred for this man who never failed to seek him out for aid, advice, and comfort; who loved him as the kind father he never had.
I think this is a wonderful movie. There are so many stories here stacked atop each other, richly implied and infuriatingly DENIED us by its focus on Salieri, which is excellently diegetic of the film's themes and Salieri's all-consuming arrogance. The cast does an astounding job helping to create this effect: F Murray Abraham is, of course and as always, Magnetically Compelling and his voice the very DEFINITION of an Instrument. His subtleties and ENORMITIES of expression and intonation do so much to make this film, and he Understands and Conveys this pathetically self-absorbed man to Vile Perfection. Tom Hulce, too, really GETS what they're going for here with Mozart; Mozart as a man stunted by parental abuse, torn btwn love and appreciation for his art wrapped entirely in the person of that abusive parent, and a Desperate, natural desire for freedom and affection; and accomplishes it with equal perfection to Abraham under the far more difficult circumstances of IMPLYING that past and interiority instead of showing it and explaining it, though unfortunately his performance hasn't gotten the attention I think it deserves, historically(looking at his wiki, he DID get a best actor nom for it, but all I ever hear or read anyone talk about this film is Abraham), and I can't think of any other movie roles of his after this one. Elizabeth Berridge as Constanze Mozart has an even MORE difficult task with an EVEN MORE Restricted part and handles it well, tho her delivery is a bit monotone(this is often a directoral issue, tho, and I dont know any behind the scenes stuff on this film). Jeffery Jones makes Emperor Joseph II a Marvelous Nonentity; an understated comedic performance of the pretentious pedestrianism of Bosses for the ages. I was VERY surprised to see Simon Callow in this movie, playing as he so often does a Theater Guy(in this instance: Emanuel Schikaneder) and it was a great "THAT Guy!!" character-actor-role, and a reminder that EVERYONE was Young and Beautiful Once.
Anyway: I thought this was a great film.
