Considering David O. Russell is the type of person who would write his college thesis on the United States intervention in Chile, his commitment to “being political” (when he’s not being philosophical) in the majority of his films is par for the course. What annoyed conservatives would call the usual “Hollywood liberal bullshit.” But Amsterdam is by far Russell’s most grandiose statement on American politics. Particularly as it pertains to the recent attempt at a coup on January 6, 2021. And this could likely be part of the reason why Americans seemed so averse to watching it, as the film has now notoriously bombed at the box office (costing the studio roughly one hundred million dollars in losses—but it’s not like they’re not good for it, right?).
With a fresh release in Europe, however, perhaps the movie will have slightly better odds at attracting a more open and understanding audience. An ilk that can see the U.S. and its government objectively for what it is: positively villainous. And yes, for a movie called Amsterdam, very little of the plot actually takes place there. Most of the stage, in fact, is set in New York, where Russell opens the timeline in 1933—better known as: the height of the Great Depression. An economic circumstance that provided plenty of opportunity for demagogues around the world to take power (including, obviously, Hitler). As well as the rich financial backers who would want such a thing to occur in order to influence and control that power.
Ah, but before all that, there was “the war to end all wars.” A real laugh of a tagline for World War I. But nonetheless, simps who trusted in their government went to battle without question for that war. Men like Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale) and Harold Woodsman (John David Washington). The former is a doctor essentially forced to use his skills overseas by his Park Avenue parents-in-law who think this is what will make him respectable in the eyes of their peers. The latter is among the many Black men forced to wear French uniforms while fighting against the enemy because the white men don’t want to be seen sharing the same fatigues, as they represent the “real” America. And oh, how they do with that “logic.” This blatant form of racism that the white soldiers still find time to employ despite being, you know, up against death every day is something that upsets General Bill Meekins (Ed Begley Jr.) greatly. And it’s part of why he asks Burt to step in as the doctor for the Black soldiers, being that he doesn’t seem too prone to discrimination a.k.a. just leaving them to bleed out because they’re Black.
So it is that an unbreakable bond is formed between Burt and Harold. One that transmogrifies into a triangular bond with a nurse named Valerie (Margot Robbie), who takes care of both of them when they end up shrapnel-filled in her hospital. Shrapnel that, as she eventually shows them, she turns into art (one of the most charming and Wes Anderson meets Jean-Pierre Jeunet details of Amsterdam). This comes after also revealing that she’s not actually French, though she has been speaking it the entire time (for it’s easy to fool non-French speaking Americans of one’s “authenticity”). But that’s just one of the many “kooky quirks” of Valerie, in addition to her knowing a man who can help Burt pin down a decent glass eye—having lost his while “fighting for democracy,” or something.
The British Paul Canterbury (Mike Meyers, who likes to play characters with “eye things,” if View From the Top is an indication) knows all about the nuances of the eye. Accordingly, he offers Burt a quality glass one for his trouble of coming all the way to Amsterdam, where Valerie has ferried him and Harold. In Paul’s company is an American named Henry Norcross (Michael Shannon), another man using glass eye manufacturing as a front for intelligence gathering. Valerie has done some of her own for them in the past, and knows that things work quid pro quo. That, one day, they’ll call upon the trio for something in return.
But, for now, this period in Amsterdam is what Valerie calls “the dream.” Whatever comes after will be horrible, which is why she’s adamant to Burt that they shouldn’t break up their Bande à Part ways (not that she uses that term—since said movie wouldn’t come out until the 60s) just so he can go back home to his wife, Beatrice (Andrea Riseborough). A wife that so obviously doesn’t give a shit about him, especially not now that he’s “mangled.” Cast out of Park Avenue, Burt goes rogue on practicing medicine, specializing solely in the specific pains of veterans. Those who, in addition to the presence of his own constant physical pain, have inspired him to cook up various chemical compounds commonly referred to as “drugs.” Ones he says need to be created because what’s out there ain’t cuttin’ the mustard in terms of catering to the level of agony veterans have.
This is back in the New York of 1933, when fifteen years have passed since that glorious Amsterdam blip that allowed Valerie and Harold to love each other freely, without the tarring and feathering of U.S. racism. Once Burt breaks up the triad, however, it all dismantles. For Valerie is asked by Harold to pull some strings with her mysterious, but powerful family—the one she ran away from—to get Burt out of jail. Because of course that’s where he would find himself for his ribald, experimental ways upon returning to the Land of the Subjugated and Repressed. Alas, once Valerie does that, it means her family will know where she is, and demand her return. So it is that she pulls the “I’ll leave you before you leave me” maneuver on Harold, departing from Amsterdam soon after she calls in the favor without forewarning him.
With all of this packed into the first hour, Russell has already woven a complicated web to land us in “present-day” 1933, where we first encountered Burt, and where Bill Meekins’ daughter, Elizabeth (Taylor Swift), has enlisted the services of Harold and Burt to perform an autopsy on her father. Incidentally, that autopsy leads to a budding romance for Burt when he meets the attending medical examiner, Irma St. Clair (Zoe Saldaña). In any case, Liz doesn’t believe her dad simply “died”—she’s convinced he was murdered on his way back from Europe. On a side note, Swift herself might be deemed part of the box office bombing of Amsterdam, being that she’s somewhat illustrious for only acting in doomed projects (ahem, Cats). Indeed, it’s surprising that Swift agreed to be in the movie at all when taking into account her fixation with being “aboveboard” vis-à-vis her squeaky-clean persona. This includes not working with people who have been accused of sexual harassment or violence—a.k.a. David O. Russell and Christian Bale.
Those critical of certain people’s continued ability to “separate the artist from the work” would likely accuse Swift and co. of “following the wrong god”—a phrase used throughout Amsterdam to refer to how Burt followed the wrong god home from the war. The god of false love. Other men, powerful men, continued to follow the god of power. Stopping at nothing to get more of it, sort of like Prescott Bush. But the Business Plot that Amsterdam centers its events around is not the core of the film. Ultimately, the crux of it is a simple message that has been repeated to deaf ears though the ages: love is more potent than hate. The latter always being the “wrong god.” Something that General Gil Dillenbeck (Robert De Niro) is particularly aware of with his vast experience in war.
Of all the characters—and there are a great many—in Amsterdam, Dillenbeck is the only one based on a real person, specifically Smedley Butler. The man tapped by a cabal of rich businessmen to influence veterans to stage a coup against the “cripple” president, Franklin Roosevelt. Indeed, the eugenics “philosophy” that was very in vogue at the time (leading to the most extreme version of it in the form of concentration camps) also features prominently in Amsterdam.
As for the statement Russell is making on the nefarious machinations of the “elite” (only deemed as such because of their endlessly deep pockets and not their character), it’s a resonant theme that has only become more pronounced in the twenty-first century. To boot, it seems no coincidence that one of Sinclair Lewis’ most famed novels, It Can’t Happen Here, was released in 1935—just two years after the Business Plot. Regardless of many still believing that Butler was either a quack or blowing the “plot” out of proportion, the fact remains that even a casual conversation among the rich about wanting to manufacture a government like one of their products is not to be taken lightly.
Regarding the coterie of unique and memorable characters Russell came up with to weave a tapestry around this historical event, he described it best when he said, “For me as I think of this guy [that Bale plays], I always like outsiders. I always like people on the edges, on the fringes.” Thanks to Amsterdam, Russell might fully become that person in Hollywood. But maybe he’s not too bent out of shape about it, so long as the same Santa Monica diners where he thought up the script for Amsterdam with Bale allow him to keep coming. And dreaming. Those diners being almost like what Amsterdam was to the thick-as-thieves trio in the film. For it was only outside the diner, when the film was made and released, that the dream got crushed.
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