41: Amsterdam, Fascism, and the Pharisees
Welcome! This is our 41st issue, but our first on Substack, and we’ll be adding the archive of our 40 previous issues in the coming days. You'll be able to read them here soon. Thanks for joining us.
Gareth Higgins on AMSTERDAM
The very existence of Amsterdam, David O. Russell’s comic drama about three friends healing together and thwarting a fascist plot, is part of the point Amsterdam is making. It’s deliriously entertaining, imaginative and compassionate, with a pure and wise core. Most importantly, what it says about hope speaks directly to the current moment.
Despite what you may have heard, the story is not complicated: in 1930s New York Burt and Harold (Christian Bale and John David Washington, who make you believe the depth of their friendship is like Desmond Tutu’s with the Dalai Lama, and just as much fun) must help their mentor’s family deal with his sudden death. Reconnecting with Valerie (Margot Robbie), the nurse who cared for them during the war and played with them after it, they uncover a terrible plot; and remember the sweetness they shared in the city for which the movie is named.
Amsterdam cares deeply about people, and if fascism is the belief that some people’s lives are worth more than others, Amsterdam is an antifascist film, and belongs in the same company as Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. It revitalizes familiar cultural tropes: war veterans on a caper, love across boundaries, class and race supremacism, overcoming bad guys, being overcome by love. Lovely performances, a visual ecosystem that feels totally real - not only architecture, cars and clothes but politics and business. Most of all, Amsterdam wants us to think differently about hope. Its vision of the world transcends the binary of “Are things getting better or worse?” by offering a distinctive, compelling, credible, and beautiful alternative. Instead of leading with brokenness or asking us to “look on the bright side”, it imagines a third way: sometimes things are bleak, and in those times, we need to draw upon the energy stored up from times and places when we were most truly alive. It’s ok - even necessary - to claim those places. In Amsterdam, that city is where the protagonists experienced the truest happiness - simple connection, recovery from titanic wounds, sharing, dancing, living. This is what Daniel Pemberton’s glorious score calls “The Good Part”, but the spirit of Amsterdam’s Amsterdam can be found anywhere there are people looking tenderly in each other’s eyes, or loving the world around them.
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