We have, in the past, occasionally considered the truth or otherwise of the old saw that there is no such thing as bad publicity – most recently in relation to the rather troubled press tour for Don’t Worry Darling. When it comes to David O Russell’s Amsterdam, however, a slightly different situation seems to be in effect. Russell has had a notably successful career as a director, with his last few films in particular proving to be Oscar-bait of the highest order – I’m thinking particularly of Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle, and Joy. Amsterdam is his first film in seven years, however, and much of the buzz around it concerns the fact that it is supposedly incomprehensible and looks likely to cost the studio that backed it the best part of $100 million (as the actual budget is only $80 million, it looks like some fancy accounting is involved in this estimate).
But this is only part of the story, as there also seems to be a lot of interest in stories about Russell himself not being the easiest person to work for or getting along with – fistfights with George Clooney, reducing Amy Adams to tears, attacking Christopher Nolan at a party, and so on. These things have been in circulation for a while, but only recently have they been attracting real attention. Is this due to Amsterdam being Russell’s first movie of the more socially-conscious post-Weinstein era, or just his first film that hasn’t been a critical and popular success? It sometimes feels like Hollywood will forgive anything except failure. It’s difficult to say, not least because the end of this story hasn’t been written yet: many big-name directors have shrugged off a big flop without too severe a set of consequences.
It would be a little unfair for Amsterdam to be dismissed as an outright failure, anyway, as there are some very successful elements in this film. Christian Bale plays Burt Berendsen, a one-time high-society doctor now fallen down the social ladder somewhat following his experiences in the Great War – these have left him with a glass eye and many scars, but also a strong friendship with Harold Woodsman (John David Washington), another veteran who is now a lawyer. Their friendship was partly forged in Amsterdam after the way, where they lived in a semi-platonic menage a troix with a nurse and artist named Valerie (Margot Robbie). But the film opens in the early 1930s, when Burt and Harold are hired to carry out a slightly unofficial autopsy on a dead general (Ed Begley Jr, who doesn’t have many lines) – his daughter (Taylor Swift) suspects his death was the result of foul play, but there are other parties taking an interest who would rather the general officially died of natural causes.
Well, soon enough the duo are being sought by the police for a suspected murder, desperately trying to clear their names by finding out what really happened to the general. Valerie resurfaces in the middle of all this, mainly because her sister (Anya Taylor-Joy) and brother-in-law (Rami Malek) are mixed up in whatever’s going on. Signs of a shadowy grouping known as the Council of Five appear, perhaps countered by two bird-watching-obsessed spymasters (Michael Shannon and Mike Myers), while a respected ex-army officer (Robert De Niro) also seems to be involved in whatever it is that’s going on.
Hmm, yes, the whole ‘whatever-it-is-that’s-going-on’ issue with respect to Amsterdam… well, I have to say that tales of the film’s supposed impenetrability seem to me to be somewhat exaggerated. This isn’t the kind of film you can coast through paying only the minimum of attention, to be sure, but neither do you need to consult a synopsis. Perhaps the problem is that the story is supposedly based on actual events, though it seems that some of the character names have been changed – apparently there really was an attempted authoritarian take-over of the USA in the 1930s (now known as the ‘Business Plot’). Threats to the integrity of the US constitution, and indeed US democracy itself, are certainly live issues at the moment, and there is something very much in tune with the spirit of the age about a movie where a collection of diverse underdogs come together in love and friendship in the name of the people of America. But these two elements of the film never really feel like they’re meshing together to produce a satisfying narrative. The movie isn’t quite the baffling double-Dutch it’s accused of being (given the title, single Dutch would be more appropriate, anyway), but neither does it really function or satisfy completely.
It almost feels like there’s a fundamental disconnect at the heart of the movie. It certainly has an appealing (and in some cases very attractive) central trio, who have good chemistry despite adopting rather different performance styles. Certainly, John David Washington is never caught acting, but this may be because Christian Bale – whose tendency to go big in certain roles has been commented on before – really launches himself bodily at his character. He is, after all, playing someone with a bad back, a glass eye and a painkiller habit, and the result is an assortment of tics and extravagant posturing which is up there with his most mannered performances of the past. Nevertheless, the freewheeling and somewhat screwball escapades of the trio are quite charming – it’s only when the story focuses on the denser details of the conspiracy plot that it seems to get bogged down.
There’s enough incidental entertainment to ensure that the movie never becomes an outright slog, though this is partly due to Russell’s success in casting a pretty big name in virtually every major part – to say nothing of giving Taylor Swift and Zoe Saldana what basically amount to extended cameos. (Matthias Schoenaerts and Alessandro Nivola turn up as a couple of cops who are basically good-hearted but still required to give the heroes a hard time.) You sense that the whole thing is supposed to be a lively, witty, flying-along kind of romp, albeit underpinned by serious themes about the kind of society we want to live in – but it never really achieves lift-off. The result is a collection of enjoyable performances and the occasional nice scene, studding a narrative which hasn’t been properly presented to the audience and is terribly lacking in clarity or accessibility as a result. There are parts of a really winning film here, but also some really bad scripting choices. Possibly worth seeing just for the cast and performances, but it’s a very close thing.