There is a lot to like about the movie adaptation and the recent National Theatre Live production of Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus. There is the the sumptuous production design, the fantastic acting from both casts, and of course the beautiful music. But one of my favorite things about Amadeus is its articulation of a cultural idea that has become quite popular to use for stories about geniuses.
I call this idea “the binary of genius.” You can state it in several ways, but I have my own personal definition. My definition is that for every genius in a story, there is a darker, more envious character that serves as the foil for that genius. That foil is oddly just as sympathetic, if not more, than the genius, and more often than not serves as the narrator of the story.
The binary of genius makes it easier for storytellers to approach depicting stories about the tricky idea of genius. Critic Matt Zoller Seitz wrote an entire piece for Rolling Stone about how hard it is to make movies about geniuses. He points out that “it takes a genius to understand a genius,” and that many filmmakers do not have that mental capacity. But the feelings of envy that burn through a figure like Salieri are universal to the most benevolent of writers. Seitz pointed out that there has been no feature length dramatic biopic about Albert Einstein. But I am sure there is at least one screenwriter who could make a decent script about a rival physicist who is dying with jealousy over the brilliance of Einstein’s theory of relativity.
This idea can be used in mediums other than film. One example is the Pulitzer-Prize winning musical Hamilton. That musical is not narrated by its brilliant, fiery title character. Instead, that role is filled by Hamilton’s nemesis, the reserved Aaron Burr. Despite similar intellects, Burr cannot match Hamilton’s genius. His desire to wait for the perfect moment to strike prevents him from making the brilliant leaps that propel Hamilton’s rise to power. Lin-Manuel Miranda is able to write both of them well because he feels like he has “been Burr in my life as many times as I have been Hamilton.” As fantastic as Hamilton’s “I want song” “My Shot” is, it is Burr’s songliloquy “Wait For It” that strikes the more powerful chord in listeners. We all have at least one moment where we feel brilliant and can take on the world, but most of us have had more moments where, in Miranda’s words, “we’ve seen friends and colleagues zoom past us, either to success, or to marriage, or to homeownership, while we lingered where we were—broke, single, jobless.”
Salieri and Burr are so attractive to audiences because they are so human. They are not gods who effortlessly charge forward to create brilliant things, but mortals who can never quite overcome their limitations. In real life it is natural to enjoy Mozart’s operas and Hamilton’s writings. But when regarding such figures in movies or musicals, it helps to explore the binary of genius’s other side.
IU Cinema screened Milos Forman’s Amadeus: Director’s Cut in 2014 during the Hollywood Renaissance – 1984 Film Series. The National Theatre Live: Amadeus screened April 2, 2017. Other National Theatre Live events have included Frankenstein, Hamlet, John, MacBeth, Medea, War Horse and more.
Jesse Pasternack is a junior at Indiana University and the co-president of the Indiana Student Cinema Guild. He writes about film, television, and pop culture for the Indiana Daily Student. Jesse is a moderator at Michael Moore’s Traverse City Film Festival and a friend of the Doug Loves Movies podcast. He has directed two short films.