Amsterdam: a limp, self-congratulatory affair
Trying and failing to emulate the zaniness of mid-century Hollywood comedies, David O’Russell’s latest film makes it clear that he ought to brush up on his American history – and sharpen his analysis of modern American capitalism.
With its sumptuous period costumes and rich cinematography, Amsterdam is easily one of the most intricately constructed pieces of smug, toothless Hollywood liberalism to date. Breaking free of the simple camera setups of preachy news parodies like The Daily Show, Last Week Tonight or The Samantha Bee Show, David O’Russell breaks new ground in telling people who are, in continental terms, actually kind of centre-right: ‘You’re very smart and doing a good job.’
As in his Accidental Love (2015), David O’Russell unsuccessfully attempts to emulate the zaniness of broad mid-century American comedies. Although the elements are there – a cavalcade of stars in bit parts, a story (complete with unnecessary voiceover) that repeatedly endorses the goodness of the American way – the patently degraded nature of America and Tinseltown in reality make the bubbly narrative an insufferable grind. The problem starts with the besties at the centre of the story, as Christian Bale (misguided but good-hearted physician Burt Berendsen) and John David Washington (top lawyer Harold Woodman) not only appear to have been thrown together from completely different movies, but actively dislike each other. While Washington is doggedly naturalistic, Bale takes his cues from Looney Tunes; Margot Robbie (a sexy society girl, avant-garde artist and spy) seems to have understood this screwball assignment, but it’s for this very reason that her romance with Washington fails to launch. Worse, the ‘fun’ cameos – like that of Taylor Swift – aren’t enjoyable at all: Swift’s a terrible actress who also happens to be a very famous singer, and while Chris Rock reliably delivers punchlines, they’re incredibly lazy jokes about race.
The plot, which is largely premised on the idea that interwar Europe was like an enormous gap year, springs forth from a high-society murder mystery and leads all the way to an international fascist cabal. This tantalising setup is undercut not just by the cameos (hey, did you ever see Mike Meyers play a really weird British guy before?) but by Burt’s tedious preaching about love and politics. “Love is not enough, ya gotta fight for it,” muses Burt, just moments after exclaiming, “There’s nothing more un-American than a dictator set up by business!” America’s brush with fascism in the 1930s is meant to be the true twist, as the film suggests that the real events upon which the movie is based were brushed under the rug by captains of industry who also happened to be Hitler’s pen-pals.
This assertion is baldly ahistorical – think of the Gilded Age or Reconstruction, or of Trump, who is a product of the American system, not an anomaly. The fact that ‘dictators set up by business’ come to power by capitalising on the myriad problems in daily American life – themselves caused by corporate domination of healthcare, education, and infrastructure – goes unexamined by O’Russell. And the supposed ‘un-Americanness’ being decried rings particularly hollow when you remember that Amsterdam was produced, and is being released, by a subsidiary of one of the largest media companies that has ever existed – one that owns a far-right news platform. O’Russell’s big speeches end up fatally undermined by their own means of production.
► Amsterdam is in UK cinemas now.