I Absolve You

I watched Amadeus last night. If there is such a thing as a perfect movie, that one has got to be on the list. Mozart’s music is not used as a set piece, or as background. The way it is utilized shows us that this stuff is IN HIS HEAD. The scene of Mozart dictating to Salieri is one of the best examples of this. Tom Hulce … drenched in sweat … trying to get that music OUT of his head, and F. Murray Abraham, trying desperately to keep up. It takes Salieri a bit longer to understand the structure of the music, to understand what Mozart was going for … He can’t “hear” it yet.

It’s really F. Murray Abraham’s movie. His performance made an indelible impression on me when I first saw it in high school.Even though jealousy and envy and wanting to destroy someone else are all very ugly qualities … the genius of that script, that movie, and Abraham’s acting (encapsulated in the last scene – the “I absolve you” scene) is that you identify with Salieri, despite yourself. You identify with the “mediocrity”. You want to hang out with Wolfgang, he looks like a blast. Also, he has the added-value of his genius. Of course you WANT to identify with him. Who wants to identify with the obsequious humorless no-talent Salieri? But the Mozarts on this earth are rare as diamonds. They are the freaks of nature, not us. They come from seemingly out of nowhere, they make it look easy – mainly because it IS easy for them … while the rest of us struggle in mediocrity.

Salieri’s rage at God for this iniquity (why would God choose a vulgar vain dirty-mouthed little man for his ultimate instrument? Why wouldn’t He choose Salieri – a man who gave up so much, who sacrificed everything at the altar of music? Why was God so unjust?) – his rage at God is what really struck me this last time through. It flamed through me like an arrow. Salieri casts the crucifix he has on his wall into the flames. And he vows, to himself, that he will now devote his life to destroying God’s instrument (Mozart). The look on F. Murray Abraham’s face, as he watches the flames.

The level of detail he gets into that character: the voice, the way his eyes move, how fawning he is to the emperor, how scheming he is when he’s by himself, how phony he is with Mozart … but then, but then … and THIS is why the performance is GREAT, not just good: the sadness mixed with awe when confronted by Mozart’s music. The couple of moments when he allows himself to be honest, to actually be in the presence of God (the music), and to be HUMBLE before it, not proud. To do what one should do before God: get on your knees. Those moments are few and far between for Salieri. To experience the rapture of God through Mozart’s music is obviously way too bitter a pill for him to swallow with any regularity. But then, there are those times … when he cannot help it. The music DEMANDS his awe, his humility. To resist would be pointless.

These are the moments, in my opinion, where F. Murray Abraham shows his true greatness as an actor. It’s like he draws the curtain back which hangs over his own soul – and he lets us see deep deep within him. He lets us see that part of ourselves that we may not be proud of: the part of us that is small, jealous, angry, petty. He lets us see that it is OKAY to feel those things, in the presence of God’s instrument. It does not feel good – he is not saying that it should feel good – but that it is okay to have that response, in the face of freak-of-nature genius like Mozart’s. He “absolves” us in the end. He absolves us of our mediocrity. He is the self-proclaimed “patron saint” of all of us.

Actors talk a lot about loving to show the darker side of humanity, of showing complexity, showing a man in turmoil, or flux, etc. These are, indeed, the things that make characters interesting and challenging. Actors must be challenged.

However, it is obviously very rare to find an actor who is actually able to do that. You know why? It’s not just a matter of talent. It’s a matter of the human condition. Human beings, in general, do not want to face their dark sides, do not want to accept their capacity for cruelty, pettiness … It’s a tough thing for ANYONE to do. Our egos go into overdrive. Self-protection is key. Keep that curtain DRAWN over your soul, and don’t let anyone see inside. Only show the outside world the good stuff, the positive stuff, the stuff that will bring you admiration. Actors have made entire careers out of only showing that stuff. (And I’m not dissing them, by the way. Good on them! We need heroes, blah blah blah. But personally speaking, “heroes” don’t interest me.) What interests me is the struggle. The struggle to be good, to be brave, to be kind. This is one of the reasons why the Lord of the Rings movies were so powerful. Frodo is the real hero of the thing. Aragorn Schmaragorn. Frodo, a small shy Hobbit, is suddenly thrust into a situation for which he is not prepared. He must overcome even more obstacles, because of his personality, size, temperament and so his triumph is that much more meaningful. His triumph also goes hand in hand with sadness, because he has paid such an enormous price.

This is the price we all must pay, if we want to be great, to make a difference, to strive to be good, to be better. There is always a price.

It is the actors who are able to show us the flaws, the darkness, the capacity for cruelty, the struggle – who really move me, who really insinuate themselves into my consciousness. They’re the ones who can actually teach me things, who can reveal me to myself. It has happened time and time again with incredible performances. That’s the power of this particular art-form. It can illuminate the dark corners of our own souls. It can bring about a necessary catharisis – pity, terror – it can help us things we may have been avoiding, things within us that need to be resolved – things we may not even be aware of ourselves.

Nobody embodies that better than F. Murray Abraham as Salieri. It’s breathtaking. And he reveals a truth which is unpleasant, something most of us don’t want to hear. And yet it’s really that truth, that truth within all of us, that makes us most human. It’s painful. It really is. And yet also – within it – is beauty. Redemption.

I listened to Mozart all morning.

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4 Responses to I Absolve You

  1. Lisa says:

    I don’t remember if it was from the movie or the stage production I saw in college, but I couldn’t get over the scene where Salieri finds Mozart’s compositions and is looking through them really quickly, marveling at their brilliance, and then. . .he slows down. . .it hits him. There are NO CORRECTIONS. No erase marks. No scribbling out of a line. No CHANGES at ALL.

    The music, like you said, was in his head and he wrote it down verbatim. He didn’t “compose” — that implies that he had an idea, tweaked it, worked with it, and then wrote it down. “Compose” implies creation and Mozart didn’t create. The music was everywhere around him, already created by God, and Mozart just HEARD it and wrote it down. You said it, he was just the instrument.

    That scene just kills me, you can just see Salieri realizing that it isn’t just that Mozart is talented, it’s that he’s blessed, gifted, in a way Salieri will never be.

  2. red says:

    Lisa – I know. Just astonishing, right??

    Salieri says something like: “There were no corrections. It was like he was taking dictation…”

  3. That’s my favorite moment in my favorite film:

    He’d simply put down music already finished in his head. Page after page of it, as if he was just taking dictation. And music finished as no music is ever finished. Displace one note and there would be diminishment. Displace
    one phrase, and the structure would fall. It was clear to me. That sound I had heard in the Archbishop’s palace had been no accident. Here again was the very voice of God!

  4. red says:

    Scott –

    Wow. Just gives you chills, huh? I can’t believe I let over a decade go by in between viewings of this film!!

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