“Amsterdam” a film by David O. Russell, 2022
This is a cheese-ball film about a real episode in U.S. history. It is almost infotainment and might leave some viewers wondering 'WTF?' It is about 2 men, one dark-skinned, one light-skinned, who become friends during WW1. They get sent into battle in the Argonne Forest and get injured. They meet an American nurse in the hospital and after the war, the 3 become inseparable, living a hip, artsy, fun life in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. So, we'll always have Amsterdam!
Anyway, the two men return to New York. One is a doctor and helps veterans and the other becomes a lawyer and helps veterans. They become involved in stopping a real plot to overthrow FDR by a cabal of rich capitalists and their fascistic spawn after they are accused of murder. This refers to a real incident in U.S. history that has been called The Business Plot. The plotters were to use a prominent general, Smedley Butler, to recruit WWI veterans, as Mussolini had done and Hitler was doing, to overthrow FDR. Butler, in real life, refused and testified against the plotters in 1934. He was vilified by the press or pooh-poohed and ignored. Even Wiki thinks the plot was alleged, so that attitude continues to this day on an event never talked about in any history class.
Its significance is not its weakness as a plot – yes it was sketchy as far as we know - but the continuing tendency it reveals within the capitalist class and its allies to get rid of any sort of bourgeois democracy using the military.
This movie has a ridiculous amount of top stars – Taylor Swift, Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, Chris Rock, Anna Taylor-Joy, Zoe Saldana, Mike Myers, Timothy Olyphant, Rami Malek and god help us, Robert DeNiro. Is this Oscar bait? This movie seems to literally be 'performative liberalism' by the Hollywood glitterati. It is perhaps meant to remind us of the threat of modern fascistic or military plots, like the botched autogolpe selfie Putsch on January 6th attempted by Trump.
Reality intrudes in references to the 1932 veteran's bonus march and the real WW1 369th Regiment of dark-skinned soldiers, but most of the story is a buddy / romance picture, with popping-out eyeballs, stupid spies, goofy cops, creepy rich people, corny singing and sinister shooters. It has the feel of a cartoon or screwball comedy. According to Butler's real testimony, the plot involved shadowy financiers, including JP. Morgan; an heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune and higher-ups in the American Legion. To Butler, they proposed a march similar to the one Mussolini proposed on Rome, but this time on Washington, D.C. - to replace an 'ailing' FDR. In the movie, these forces are fictionalized.
David O. Russell has done prior films – the war comedy Three Kings; the 'existential' comedy I Heart Huckabees; the tragi-comic Silver Linings Playbook; the financial scandal comedy American Hustle; and Joy, another 'dramedy.' There seems to be a pattern here. Is this film worth watching? Other than the fun of identifying famous actors, no. Experts on the plot reveal the film is about 10% accurate. The mash-up scene of Madison Square Garden Nazis and Harlem Hell-Fighters is made up. No one was murdered in the real plot. Nor is Butler's violent colonialist background shown as the rationale for recruiting him.
While the real plot was somewhat limited, the film reinforces the idea that it was just another funny shit-show, the kind that is so common in the U.S. The movie is a continuation of 'the ship of fools' idea about the wacky politics of America. Unfortunately, we're not laughing much anymore. While the ultra-Right is a comedic gold-mine, Hitler was also a joke initially. Rightists like Trump, Marjorie Taylor-Green, Ted Cruz and Lauren Boebert, their internet backers, along with many military generals are clowns – but is comedy sufficient to stop them? The obvious answer is no.
Prior blog reviews on this topic, use the upper left search box to investigate our 16 year old archive, using these terms: “War is a Racket” (Butler); “All Quiet on the Western Front,” “The Flivver King” (Sinclair); “1917” (Mendes), "It Was Predictable."
The Cultural Marxist
March 23, 2023
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