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.

Oblivion

Written at the time of the film's release...

Finding Oneself in the Future
or
Scavenging the Sci-Fi Landscape

The new Tom Cruise vehicle Oblivion (written and directed by Joseph Kosinski from his "unpublished" graphic novel* and whose previous film was Tron: Legacy) is a science fiction tale that borrows very liberally from the last 30 years of movie sci-fi to the point where you swear you've seen the movie before. 

You have, but which one depends on the reel of the film you're watching.  

The year is 2077.** Earth has just survived a long, devastating war with an alien race that, in its final act to "poison the well" destroyed Earth's moon, creating dire ecological conditions for the planet, wiping out civilization and leaving its coasts under hundreds of feet of silt from tsunamis and tidal devastation. Folks have moved to the moon Titan, off the rings of Saturn, the last remaining humans being Jack Harper (Cruise) and Vicca (Andrea Riseborough), a mated team of tech-mechanic and monitor whose job it is to keep the giant moisture evaporators running Titanville or wherever and keep them up and running from complications, both natural and unnatural. The natural being wear and tear and the unnatural the last vestiges of the die-hard combatants—Scavengers—who are still trying to tear apart the fragile mining of Earth's resources to defeat the human race. Jack monkey-wrenches and Vicca runs data, all under the watchful work-schedule of Sally (Melissa Leo) who oversees their efforts from a large rectangular control station in orbit around Earth, called the Tet.***

So far, so hum-drum. Yes, there's a lot of background that Cruise has to spew in the first ten minutes, but basically he's playing another working class stiff doing a dirty job in the future.

Jack and Vicca are a happy-in-love working team, awaiting the day when they can get off this rock and join civilization on Titan. Jack, bothered by dreams of the observation deck on the Empire State Building and a smiling beauty (Olga Kurylenko) in the New York crowd, gets in his dragonfly of a jetcraft, repairing busted defender drones, and keeping a wary eye on "scav's."  

Cruise's futuristic mechanic keeps an eye on those moisture-vaporators

That's just the set-up.  Things, as they are wont to do, "get complicated" and to say how would start a cascading spoiler effect that will ruin the movie. I can't even talk about influences without giving away key pieces of information that will kill the "reveals" (even if one does see some of this stuff coming from light-years away), so let's just say that you'll spend the same amount of time playing "name that reference" in post-screening mode, as you do actually watching the movie. (Would one call that deja-viewing?  And shouldn't a science fiction movie be looking forward, rather than backwards?****) 

One key sequence echoes Planet of the Apes. Jack's patrol sector is the former northeast coast of the U.S. (and we get a respectful nod at the decimated Statue of Liberty), but only that section, as there's a radioactive "border" he can't cross. He is told at one point to go explore beyond his limitations and into the radiation zone if he wants answers. One could easily hear Dr. Zaius echo the words "You won't like what you find..." in the background. This leads to the biggest revelation of the film, but, instead of answers, it just leads to more questions, which the film goes into warp-drive trying to explain, not very successfully, as plot-holes and logic disconnects begin to eat away at the movie like nano-viruses.

And science-fiction movies usually have a message for us livers-in-the-now, either cautionary or revelatory.  Oblivion fails there by having as its message that we are replaceable cogs in the wheel of society's meat-grinder. That message was delivered by Fritz Lang's Metropolis way back in the silent era of movies in 1927. Here we are in the 21st Century (when we should all be wearing jet-packs) and that's all we get...besides the obligatory shoot-outs and chase sequences? If there's a message there it's along the lines of "Take out the recycling."

*—"well, then, it doesn't really count, does it?"—

** The film is extraordinarily exposition-heavy in the beginning in a long narration spoken by Cruise.  So much so, that one wonders why they didn't just make a movie of the events spoken of in the exposition. The reason why makes up the plot of the movie and reveals the Cruise character to be the most unreliable of narrators.

*** Amusingly, the first sign we get of the orbiting Tet is a glimpse of it, traversing the globe on the new logo for Universal Studios at the film's beginning.

**** And, appropriately, into the future. One of the previews preceding Oblivion is for Elysium, the new film by District 9's Neil Blomkamp, where the 1%ers have moved to an idyllic space station, while the rest including cyborg-ish freedom fighter Matt Damon robo-cops attitude against the machinery of the uber-klass. The two movies could be book-ends for each other.  Think of the double-bill (and the headline): "Oblivion /Elysium/ Expatriatic/ Tedium"

The Death of Stalin

Dr. Strangebedfellows: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Bury the Politburo
or
"How Can You Run and Plot at the Same Time?"

"The Death of Stalin is aimed at inciting hatred and enmity, violating the dignity of the Russian (Soviet) people, promoting ethnic and social inferiority, which points to the movie’s extremist nature. We are confident that the movie was made to distort our country’s past so that the thought of the 1950s Soviet Union makes people feel only terror and disgust."

Petition from the Russian Cultural Ministry

"[a] western plot to destabilise Russia by causing rifts in society"

Public Council of the Russian Ministry of Culture

Oh, those poor Russkies.  They finagle our elections, annex territories, disrupt social media, and conspire with tyrants, while bagging as many rubles for themselves in their so-called "everybody-is-equal" political system. 

But, criticize them and they bleat like sheep.

Never mind that the director has been making fun of the British and Americans with his past work—like In the Loop and "Veep"—that no doubt cheers them and think are a laugh riot. But, turn the same satirical eye against them and it's a plot to "destabilise" Russia. As if they needed any help doing that themselves.

In a rather reflective "coalition of the willing" The Death of Stalin combines French, British and American forces; it started as a french comic book, and is a combination of Brit and Yank talents to bring it to the screen. Maybe the Culture Ministry feels that's a little too much attacking from the same forces. Satire does raise hackles. However, the satire of In the Loop and "Veep" produced an echoing silence (tacit approval?) while The Death of Stalin creates howls of protest and conspiracy concerns. What's good for the goose is not always good for the self-satisfied gander. 

So, what's causing the fuss? The Death of Stalin looks at the scrambling done by the prominent members of the Politburo following Stalin's death by a cerebral hemorrhage on March 5, 1953.

The events begin when Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin) requests a recording of a performance he'd heard on Radio Moscow that night. Unfortunately, when the live concert was broadcast, a recording was not made—but one does not disappoint Stalin (one might get shot). So, a second impromptu concert is staged, paying off the piano soloist (Olga Kurylenko), to repeat the performance and rousting a replacement conductor from his bed, after the original one suffers a debilitating accident while fainting at the prospect of any potential consequences. The pianist includes a note with the recording, deriding the Premier, whose reaction (either from the note or the poor rushed recording) prompts his stroke. The guards outside his door hear him collapse, but, having orders not to disturb his sleep under penalty of death, do nothing but hold their post.

The next morning, the dacha housemaid enters the room and finds Stalin unconscious on the floor. Phone calls are made—not to any "good" doctors as many of them have been purged—but to the senior officials under Stalin. They include Georgy Malenkox (Jeffrey Tambor)—who has been rumored to be replaced (and killed) in Stalin's plans, Lavrenti Beria (Simon Russell Beale), the security director of the secret police, the NKVD, and Moscow Party Leader Nikita Krushchev (Steve Buscemi), who is awakened by the news and is so exercised about the event that he arrives at the dacha in pants and pajamas. Beria manages to get there first, finds the body and searches for the key to Stalin's files and manages to smuggle some out. Before Krushchev and Lazar Kaganovich (Dermot Crowley) can arrive, Beria convinces Malenkov that he should be the next Premier, knowing that he's weak and easily influenced. When Krushchev and Kaganovich enter the room, Beria and Krushchev begin to butt heads over who can out-blackmail the other to gain a stronger footing.

But, one should never count their hens. When Stalin is moved by the four (with the help of Anastas Mikoyan (Paul Whitehouse) and Nikolai Buganin (Paul Chahidi) to his bed and examined by the best doctors not currently in prison or a gulag, it looks like the Premier might make a recovery, and the group returns to the fawning postures that (of course) they hope for a full recovery and everything will stay just the same—until Stalin actually dies and they return to dividing the spoils. No sooner do Beria and Krushchev curry favor with Stalin's daughter Svetlana (Andrea Riseborough) while marginalizing his drunken son Vasily (Rupert Friend) and leave the premier's quarters, that the NKVD move in and evacuate the building, take over all the possessions and furnishings and murder any witnesses.

Once Vyacheslav Molotov (Michael Palin) is brought on board (Beria has released his wife from prison where she was imprisoned for supposedly being anti-Stalinist), the group can start having rather tentative meetings and votes on how to proceed—everyone eyes each other to see how the other will vote, hands tentatively half-raised before committing—and is decided that Comrade Krushchev should be kept busy planning the late Premier's funeral...where the personal positioning for power can really move into full swing.

The political fandango is based (advisedly) on true events, with comedic license for interpolations. To see the power elite of Moscow at their most insecure, even while the stakes are life-changing is a hilarious dance of desperation that shows how petty and craven the instincts of those in power can be displayed (even before Twitter). That's what satire does—expose the frailties, whether in people, in systems, in governments, and how the best-laid plans have beach-like foundations. It's a release valve for the toxic stress involved in the absurdities of flawed circumstances. But, the only way to see the humor of it is to admit the flaws. To not do so runs the risks of making the same mistakes over and over...which really is the height of both tragedy, as well as comedy, comrade.

Battle of the Sexes (2017)

Bread and Circuses
or
Tennis is a Cruel Mistress

Those of us "of an age" who lived through the "Battle of the Sexes"—the 1973 televised tennis exhibition match between Billy Jean King and Bobby Riggs proved nothing about tennis and the relative ability of men and women to play it—mostly remember the hype and hoopla of it all, rather than its relative merits of any real "battle of the sexes." 

King was 29 years young and at the top of her game. Riggs was 55 years old and at the top of his game in 1939, when he won the Grand Slam. But, Riggs was a gambler and a hustler, and he took advantage of the recent split of nine of the top female tennis players from the USTLA over the pay discrepancy between men and women players to fan the flames of sexism that were inherent in a sport that had its roots in social clubs that had discrimination of sex and religion in its by-laws. It was a calculated gamble. He won publicity either way, and, any overflow benefiting tennis and women's tennis, in particular, was an unintended benefit to those parties.

The "event" was fictionalized before; in 2001, ABC, the network that originally made hay on the televised broadcast commissioned a version "When Billie Beat Bobby" that starred Holly Hunter and Ron Silver (respectively). In the time since, much more has come out about King's personal life at the time and that becomes a major plot-point in Battle of the Sexes, the new version of the story "from the directors of Little Miss Sunshine" (that would be Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton*-it isn't mentioned that they also directed Ruby Sparks, presumably because it wasn't "the indie hit" their previous film was). The result is a fairly straight-forward adaptation (King was a consultant and a remarkably fair one, it turns out) that manages to show the effects of marginalization—whether sex, sexuality, or age (not that we need a demonstration of it these days)—and Society's penchant for exploitation and for waking up and considering larger issues...if there's a buck in it.

At the start—the timeline is crunched, somewhat—Billie Jean King (Emma Stone excellently not depending on her strengths) has won the Grand Slam and is the most well-known women's tennis player on the circuit. She's pulling in crowds. Despite that, tour promoter Jack Kramer (played by Bill Pullman) refuses to raise the stakes of the women's tournament in line with the men's, which, by rights, should be eight times higher than what he's offering. With World Tennis publisher Gladys Heldman (a shining Sarah Silverman), the two decide to create their own tournament, signing on for a token amount of one dollar apiece, attracting enough attention to be sponsored by Virgina Slims. 15-love for the women.

The leading women's tennis players sign on to a tournament for $1 apiece.

Women's tennis is getting attention. The women's tournament is causing controversy. Meanwhile, Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell, who plays it exactly as you'd assume he'd play it, with a sense of the outrageous and the pathetic, making him the perfect person to play Riggs) is unhappily working at a firm owned by his father-in-law, and cheerily using the contacts to make bets on his own skills as a tennis player. Bobby has a gambling addiction—one so bad that he perpetually is playing high-stakes poker with his therapist (now that's funny!)—and he sees the attention the women's tour is getting and he sees dollar signs that go along with his arrogance that he could easily beat any of the women's league. So, he goes on a public attack, challenging King to a grudge match, daring her to take him on. 

She refuses, but changes her mind when Margaret Court, also in the league, accepts the challenge and loses in what became known as "The Mother's Day Massacre." King decides to take him, seeing as how she must now defend women's tennis in the eyes of the ticket-buying public. King is used to being in the public eye, but the intense scrutiny that the Riggs dare focuses on her is something she isn't quite prepared for. And there's another complication—the married King has begun an affair with a hairdresser, Marilyn Barnett (Andrea Riseborough), who travels with the tour. The intense scrutiny of an out-of-wedlock affair, let alone a lesbian affair) could play disastrously in a playing field for hearts and minds.

This part of the story has never been told (and it's the reason Faris and Dayton wanted to make the movie) and sheds a light on the tenor of the times, the stakes at risk, and how easily a capriciously started challenge can turn deadly serious. Barnett's presence is hushed up, hidden, and fairly buried lest it cast an easy-target on women's tennis, women's roles, and feminism, already being given a pretty good beating in the public maelstrom around the event. The interesting thing is that Barnett, and the pressures she was under, are given a very sympathetic eye in the film, despite the fact that Barnett sued King for palimony in 1981, effectively "outing" the tennis star in a very public way. But, the affair is given a romantic edge and there's not a hint of animosity in the way Barnett is portrayed. That is both charitable and practical, because the true focus on the film should be the prejudices across all courts that women faced then and face now.

Mistress and Husband meet cute in an elevator before realizing that they have a loved one in common.

One should mention that the film does a fine job of presenting all these quandaries and challenges without getting more preachy than the evidence already suggests—they stick very close to events as they actually happened, and given the media coverage there is more than enough evidence to vouch for its authenticity. Some of the effects work to achieve it is amazing—they really have an archived Howard Cosell with his arm around the real-life woman playing Rosie Casals? And they do a great job of combining archival footage with match recreations that don't skimp on the dramatics on the court.

It's amazing what causes change, even a bit of one. Riggs, and his outlandish braggadocio, and hustling piggishness put out in relief that women's tennis...and women's careers...was never being played on a level court, but one always slanting uphill. His sideshow chauvinism only brought out in relief the unstated, but very real inequity that was part of the system—it just wasn't highlighted in klieg-lights for all to see. It was kept in the boardroom shadows, without even the grace to feel shame, like an illicit affair might. Grace is what ultimately wins out in Battle of the Sexes, with a victory far more lasting than a number in a records book.

Sports is a distraction—our current Society''s version of the Roman concept of "Bread and Circuses," the means by which the Romans kept the populace from any concentrating on the deficiencies of the elite in charge "through diversion, distraction, or the mere satisfaction of the immediate, shallow requirements of a populace." Keep the masses entertained and they won't notice that things aren't so good as they think. But, every so often, sports will serve as a catalyst for change. We saw it in the desegregation of baseball, the installation of Title IX, and the current "controversy" of "taking a knee" during the National Anthem—as blatant an example of the bread and circuses form of obfuscation. The "Battle of the Sexes," while ultimately being a sideshow, did bring light to the disparity of pay-offs to players of different sexes, and, by reflection, the wage-gap prevalent in the broader work-places. In that way, by shining a light on old prejudices and the status quo, such "distractions" can become genuine "game-changers" sparking advancement and keeping the flame of equality alive...or at least visible in the distance.

* The writer is Simon Beaufoy, who did a few scripts for Danny Boyle (including Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours) who produced this—but didn't direct as his sequel to Trainspotting became viable. Beaufoy also wrote The Full Monty, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. He may not be a house-hold name, but it's quite a body of work.