Amadeus

Although the title suggests Mozart to be the main character, the film in fact center around his secret rival Salieri and whose mind we are invited to enter. The film is named after the middle name of Mozart instead of his last name that is widely recognized. I guess there is meaning behind that the name is chosen as the title of the film. The name Amadeus means “love of God” in Latin. The film is not meant to trace Mozart’s genius; rather, it depicts the envy of Salieri who was not talented as Mozart could only desire for God’s grace and admire the gift that God had chosen to bestow on someone else.

The film Amadeus delves deeply into the character’s inner world, which focus on the circumstances, motives and internal action of the character. The film starts with Salieri’s suicide attempt as he is overwhelmed by his guilt over causing the death of Mozart. He recounts his tale as confession to a young priest in a mental asylum. He goes on to explain the motivation of his action and the force behind Mozart's financial difficulties and death. Because he believes that Mozart's genius is a gift from God to tease his musical mediocrity. From his tale, we can find that he often associates his life to God's will and seek for God's will when he is planning to do something. However, it seems that the influence of his belief in God has driven him crazy and make him go too far, in which he justified murder to be a God's will.

Throughout the plot, we can find that Salieri is filled with painful inner conflict. He has been struggling between his jealousy for Mozart and his heartfelt admiration of his genius music. He condemns Mozart’s childish and libertine behavior, but there is a part of him that admires him for his independence. Perhaps Salieri has developed a love-hate relationship with Mozart.  Even until he decides to plot Mozart’s ultimate ruin, he still remains as a devoted admirer.

Everyone has an ideal self – the one you feel you should be like (Rogers,1959). Most people wish to reach the top of career, profession, and want to be like a particular role model. Just like Salieri, he wishes to become the person like Mozart who produces great music. It is fine if we try to emulate our role model and succeed, but it is also fine if we try and not succeed. Things will only go wrong when we are too obsessed with our ideal self. When we try to reach and maintain the ideal self but not succeed, we feel bad about ourselves, then mental stress such as despair and depression will arise. In other words, if a person’s ideal self and real self are not consistent or have little overlap, more than likely the person will experience certain amount of dissonance and have lower sense of self-worth (Rogers, 1959). As we want to see ourselves in the ways that consistent with our self-image and also reflects our ideal self, we may develop defense mechanisms such as denial or repression to alleviate the undesirable feelings caused by it (Rogers, 1959). In the film, Salieri devalues his own works and misattributes his musical mediocrity to unjust God and blame Him for not helping him create better music. We can have an idea self, but the key is we should be aware of and accept the fact that the ideal self may not be sure to be achieved.

One of the interesting parts of this film is that the story is entirely recounted through the perspective of Salieri, which is at times subjective and clouded with envy and resentment. If we follow the rhythm of his tale, we will be led deep into his mind and experience his tragedy. Through all of this, I feel empathy for him, and thus it becomes harder to label him as just villain. Because Salieri is the person who shows us ourselves, and we can see ourselves in him. The desires to succeed, to be great, to earn reputation, we all are looking for something that gives us meaning in the world.