‘Amadeus’ review: Paul Bettany and Will Sharp Tingle in Starz’s thrilling historical epic

It is almost inevitable that biographies of artistic icons will fail to do them justice. The main reason why these characters are worth celebrating is their uniqueness – their unparalleled brilliance or shocking originality. By definition, the vast majority of other (even highly skilled) storytellers trying to memorialize them can’t pull it off.

Sly twist of AmadeusThen he does not claim otherwise. The impossibility of comprehending, let alone explaining, true genius is built into the premise of the Starz drama, which is framed as the end-of-life confession of a good composer (Paul Bettany’s Antonio Salieri) doomed to exist in the shadow of a great composer (Lowell Sharpe’s Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart). And if she doesn’t come close to achieving the latter’s immortal supremacy, her understanding of how crazy that failure can be is thrilling in itself.

Amadeus NOT ORIGINAL – This version was created by Joe Barton (Black pigeons) and based, like the 1984 Milos Forman film, on Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play, which was based on Alexander Pushkin’s 1830 play, which was loosely based on the actual history. But it does what every worthwhile adaptation does (and what many recent re-adaptations have failed to do), which is make the story feel complete in its own right.

In late 1824, the elderly Salieri (Bettany in outrageous old-age make-up) summons Constanze Mozart (Gabriel Creevy in a less convincing face) to make a confession. He says he was the one who cut off her husband in the prime of his life, though how and why will take his time to reveal. Like all attention-starved people, he can’t resist prolonging his moment in the spotlight as long as possible, over the course of five hour-long episodes.

In his telling, Salieri was doing well in Vienna in 1781 as a respected composer with some major successes under his belt and favored by Emperor Joseph II (Rory Kinnear). The only thorn in his side is the creative block that leaves him staring at a blank page when he’s not begging God on his knees for inspiration. (Girl, I was there.)

Which means this is the worst possible time for Mozart, a young man from Salzburg brimming with big ideas, to move to the city. At first, Salieri is willing to dismiss this upstart as so many others have done before: “I’ve met my fair share of miracles in my time,” he sniffs. “I can’t say I remember many of their names now, though.” From the moment he hears Mozart touch the keyboard, he feels that this instrument is different. This will endure in a way that Salieri will not.

Bettany plays the artist even in the earlier, happier days as he has a cold personality and is wary of his private life. Salieri never loses consciousness of his relative position in any given room (a functional requirement, really, as a court composer), and never calculates ways to maintain or develop that position. Only when he listens to music does he become fully alive – which is why it kills him that God saw fit to shower this rough and immature young man with all the gifts he had so cruelly withheld from the pious Salieri.

But if Salieri saw only Mozart’s ingratitude and arrogance, Amadeus It moves far enough away from his point of view to paint a fuller picture. Sharpe slightly overplays Mozart’s rock-star-kid energy at first, but he also brings a slight vulnerability that – as we delve deeper into the sources of his pain, such as the father issues dramatized in a few too many dream sequences – eventually festers into an open wound.

Salieri cannot help but be angry at the way Mozart’s creativity brings him closer to God. Amadeus He also sees how it separates him from his fellow humans. The sounds of real life turn into symphonies in his mind, which in turn drown out the sounds of real life. The reality of this is He is “How I Talk” When someone suggests that it might be easier to talk to his wife about their problems than to write an opera about them, he asserts that the only language in which he can fully express himself is a language in which no one else speaks fluently.

Amadeus We can never again make new melodies and sonatas that are so deeply ingrained in our culture that they are recorded, for the most part, as background music. But in the complete emotion with which Mozart conducts the orchestra, or in Salieri’s pained expressions of ecstasy as he listens, he offers a taste of how exciting it must be to hear these notes for the first time. (It mostly avoids the music-biography trap of drawing too neon a line between Mozart’s inspirations and outputs, or enlarging the book in a way that merits a groan The Marriage of Figaro It will be built on, so it is an additional blessing.)

At the same time, Amadeus He acknowledges that even the sublime has limits—it cannot, by itself, pay the bills, keep a home happy, or forestall a tragedy. The best vehicle to bring Salieri’s vengeance back to earth is not the rebellious Mozart, but Constanze, perceptive and realistic in a way that men, protected by their talents or institutional power, did not have to be. Creevy’s raucous performance makes her such a force to be reckoned with that she almost, but not quite, escapes the ungrateful trope of long-suffering wife to troubled genius.

While Mozart delivers one timeless classic after another, unhindered by professional disappointment, personal grief, or even the needs of his body when he falls ill, Salieri is there at every turn to interrupt his performances, whisper in the Emperor’s ear, and manipulate the younger man into abusing the wrong people. It is nauseating to watch Salieri display what turns out to be his true ingenuity, an almost divine ability to shape another man’s life through the sheer force of petty will.

I mean, if you believe him. Elderly Constanze isn’t so sure. There is something so reckless in the way he recounts his past sins, so desperate in his insistence that he is the true author of her husband’s story. If this is Salieri’s last attempt to secure a lasting legacy for himself, he succeeds; As the hilarious epilogue reminds us, it’s true Amadeus And what he lives through all these subsequent centuries is evidence of that. Antonio Salieri indeed lingers in our imagination, not because of the great man he was, but because of the man he certainly was not.