Amsterdam (2022)

"What Fresh Hell Is This?"

or

The Endurability of Good Intentions. ("He Followed the Right God Home...")

 

Who knows when it really, really started in the scheme of things, but it really started to get intense with the dead Senator in the box with no lid.

 

Just back from Europe by ship, he turns up dead and his daughter (Taylor Swift) wants an autopsy. So, she calls two guys from the former General's old integrated unit in WWI, Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale), a doctor of "experimental medicine," and Harold Woodman (John David Washington), Columbia University-trained lawyer, to oversee the procedure. To ensure that the procedure is done without prejudice, Dr. Irma St. Clair (Zoe Saldana) does the autopsy.

 

What the autopsy reveals is suspicious, but when Harold and Burt attend a pre-arranged meeting with the general's daughter to report their findings, they see her running away for their rendezvous, stricken. "He knew something. He saw something terrible," she says while she can.

 

Join the crowd.

Before the night is over, Burt and Harold are on the run from the police, accused of a murder they didn't commit, but sure of who committed it, not that it matters in the short run. They have to hide...and they have to find out who killed the General and who's behind all this...because...they're veterans. Their commander has died. And they owe him.

But, that's history. In that history, Burt found himself the medic for the 369th Infantry, an integrated unit in WWI France. Its commander was such a racist that he required the black infantry to wear French uniforms, rather than American ones due to white soldier complaints, but he was replaced by his commander General Bill Meekins (Ed Begley Jr.), and to further cement fences, Berendsen made a pact with the most vocal soldier, Woodman, that they would always have each other's backs. Even during "The Argonne."

Berendsen and Woodman are severely wounded, requiring many operations to remove shrapnel by a diligent French nurse named Valerie (Margot Robbie), who repairs their wounds and forms a bond with the two men, eventually taking them to Amsterdam, ostensibly to take Burt to a company called Cambridge Glass (run by characters played by Michael Shannon and Mike Myers), manufacturers of the best quality glass eyes, but more to live together in peace and fellowship and recover from "the war to end all wars." They become "lost."

It is an idyll that can't last. "Choice matters over needs." Burt, finally becoming comfortable in his scarred skin, decides to return to America out of his devotion to his wife. Harold stays with Valerie, but sees no future in it ("We only exist in Amsterdam") and returns to America to pursue a law degree. Then, their General comes home in a box.

David O. Russell's Amsterdam is being marketed as a star-filled cream-puff of a movie, but it isn't that. Instead, it's a good-natured political screed on the dangers of fascism roosting in America, basing it on the "Business Plot", a little remembered attempt by conservative business interests, unhappy with liberal Franklin Roosevelt's election, to use veteran protests over delayed bonuses by the Hoover administration, to install an un-elected military official to essentially oust FDR as President. As a modern context, let's suppose that the MyPillow guy and the CEO of Overstock didn't like the results of the 2020 election and were taking aggressive actions to have it over-turned. Couldn't happen, right?

 

Oh. Oh, right. 

It's a curious little gremlin of a movie. There are going to be a certain number of people—on the far right, maybe fascist, certainly white supremacist side—that would never see this movie. And then there are others—people who are stuck in the post Nixon era cynical groove (which has only atrophied during the Trump years to the point where late-night comedians can barely keep up) who will look at it and pooh-pooh it as satire-lite, which is easy to do if you're viewing it with the same attitude as one would have now.

But, the folks depicted in this movie didn't live through Nixon. They lived through World War I and came home to depressions, both Great and small. They still believed in government and they still believed in the United States, no matter what tough times they'd been through. The same starry-eyed patriots who volunteered in droves during World War II. Because they believed in something bigger than themselves. That's not a popular sentiment these days.

And Russell's movie may be off-putting for those who want their messages obvious and with the tone of righteous indignation (that is also popular these days) instead of the quick-paced Wes Anderson whimsy that it evokes. Still, it doesn't shirk from portraying grievous war-wounds—praise must be heaped on the make-up department for their relentless consistency—on people who refuse to see themselves as victims.

These are people who, despite their quirks, walk the talk and aspire to good intentions despite the consequences. Burt, being Half-Jewish, Half-Catholic goes to war at the behest of his Park Avenue in-laws only to find that the means are more important than the ends, especially considering that their respect for the military doesn't extend to veterans. He is kicked out of his lofty office address and starts work in the streets and then in Harlem, to the point of moving out of the apartment he shares with his wife...he's so straight an arrow that he doesn't even think that's perverse. Woodburn is black in an early 20th century—he already knows the heartbreak of good intentions when your skin isn't the predominant color. Yet, he has found validity and valediction in another country fighting for a country that wouldn't consider giving it. And Verna is a rich girl considered a kook, but whose dedication in the operating room goes above and beyond the requirements and limitations of triage. Their actions all make sense in a society that ignores their sacrifices while reaping the rewards of the very things they fought to protect.

The cast is uniformly excellent with Bale coming up with a fully realized character taking advantage of the limitations of a back-brace and glass eye and turning it into a performance reminiscent of Peter Falk—and in moments of agitation, Martin Scorsese, while Washington is his most relaxed since BlacKKKlansman. Robbie has a little trouble with accents, but manages to make a performance that is both alluring and comedic, and it's all photographed with a slight sepia tone by Emmanuel Lubezki, who manages to turn out top-tier work under technically challenging conditions.  

One has to admit, though, that Amsterdam is better in the after-glow than in the light of projection. Free from its manic energy in that post-viewing meditation, two aphorisms come to mind—for a movie that is full of them. One (that I've heard quoted so many times it defies origination) is "If you have a message, call Western Union", something that Amsterdam does with tenacity in its reckless abandon to obfuscate with comedy. The other I heard from legendary baseball announcer "Red" Barber on one of his weekly talks with Bob Edwards on the NPR Morning Edition. He said "It's not the one with the most toys, wins. God doesn't count the toys. He counts the scars."

 

There are a lot of scars in Amsterdam. I like that.