Autopsies and Allegory in David O. Russell’s Amsterdam

It was the second century theologian St. Clement of Alexandria who first employed allegorical interpretation as a hermeneutic for the Scriptures, promoting it as God’s way of blinding the truth from the ignorant while revealing it to the spiritually renewed. While disregarded as a legitimate biblical interpretive tool for several centuries now, allegory remains a powerful tool of storytelling in general as it forces the audience to focus their skills of analysis on multiple levels at the same time.

Adapting Clement’s thesis for the silver screen, David O. Russell’s latest film Amsterdam opens with an autopsy. It’s a fitting metaphor for a movie that’s designed to both comfort and unsettle the audience by peering below the surface and rattling our internal cages of purpose, meaning, love and truth—albeit subversively. As the movie quickly shifts from this opening scene into the main plot (or, rather, main plots), viewers could be forgiven if they forget that the catalyst for the next two hours stems from the film’s protagonist dismembering a corpse.

From start to finish, Amsterdam moves with a ceaseless juxtaposition of the glamorous and the grotesque, inviting viewers to ask profound questions about the ways in which our culture of consumerism and materialism has numbed us to our deepest needs. Needs that are so often answered with empty declarations concerning what is not only most important, but truly valuable. It’s a poignant tale for our time and a desperately needed reminder that, despite what social media moguls would have us believe, human connections are in decreasingly short supply these days. And unfortunately for Russell (with apologies to St. Clement, as well), so is our culture’s stomach for allegory and nuance in an era when the highest grossing movies center on multiverse battles and CGI characters wearing tights.

As if to prove this theory, negative reviews of the film have been both numerous and unanimous in their criticisms. Christy Lemire called Amsterdam “overstuffed and undernourished, frantic and meandering.” David Fear declared it “a beautiful, all-star mess.” Sift through the list of reviews on Rotten Tomatoes—which currently honors Amsterdam with a mere 32%—and you’ll find it dominated by such unflattering descriptors as “meandering,” “unfocused,” “exhausting,” and “senseless.” Despite these critiques, Amsterdam offers us something more than mere entertainment or a tight plot. It drives poetically at a message that pricks the heart of every human: “Can I be loved?”

Reading the reviews, I’m reminded of David Ramirez’s song “The Forgiven” in which he skewers the shallowness of his audience when he croons:

You’re just a songwriter
You ain’t a preacher
We came to mourn you
Not to look in the mirror

A mirror is precisely what Russell forces the audience to stare at. Without providing too detailed a synopsis, the film is set in 1930s New York and centers on three characters and the three key intersections of their lives: a war, a murder, and an attempted coup. Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale) and Harold Woodsman (John David Washington) are both wounded soldiers from World War I. During their hospital stay, they’re introduced to a volunteer nurse named Valerie Voze (Margot Robbie). Voze is a mysterious American who spends most of her free time as a macabre artist fashioning, among other forms of art, sculptures from the shrapnel pulled from wounded vets.

The trio leaves the war-torn land and spends time together in the city of Amsterdam, where their bohemian lifestyle comes to a halt when Voze disappears without a trace. Decades later, the film returns to New York where Burt is working with wounded vets by offering plastic surgery (of sorts) and creating his own experimental medicines. Meanwhile, his wartime friend Harold is working in the city as an attorney. When a client (Taylor Swift) asks for their help in investigating a possible murder, the client herself is killed and Burt and Harold become the suspects. All of this leads to a surprising reunion with the mysterious Voze and their efforts to uncover a sinister plot to overthrow the newly elected Franklin D. Roosevelt.

A war, a murder, and an attempted coup. If the above plot sounds frantic, audiences and critics found it no less so as it was hurtling towards them in real time from the screen. In that regard, I concur with those who charge Russell with trying to accomplish too much if he was, indeed, trying to accomplish too much. But ultimately, I disagree with that. I think Russell was trying to do one thing that’s been at the heart of almost all of his previous films.

Described succinctly by Bilge Ebiri, Russell’s films have always focused on “How we deal with our brokenness.” And there’s plenty of brokenness in Amsterdam to go around. Physical brokenness in the war scars, autopsies, and murder. Spiritual brokenness in the addictions and endless search for acceptance. Emotional brokenness in the loneliness, despair, and trauma. Add in layers of relational, political, and psychological brokenness, and Russell’s latest film is clearly about far more than the horrors of war or political intrigue.

If Russell has committed any faux pas with Amsterdam, it lies in the fact that his star-studded cast is apt to distract from the themes he’s trying to parse. With its complete list of who’s who in Hollywood, moviegoers can be forgiven for assuming Amsterdam was an easy shoe-in for an Oscar-nominated blockbuster while simultaneously missing the hidden gem of Amsterdam—the story being told beneath the story. Russell has used historical events, and a handful of fictional ones, as mere chauffeurs to usher the audience into a far weightier exploration of wealth, beauty, brokenness, and love. Despite what the majority of critics discuss, Russell has not created a parable about the dangers of far-right political ideology, but rather, the truer danger of living in a world where relationships never transcend mere transaction.

Few places in the film depict this more accurately than when Burt is pressured to enlist in the war by his socialite wife and wealthy in-laws. Perched nervously on a couch in their ostentatious living room, Burt is shown to be a fragile man who longs for the approval of a family for whom he has never measured up. Without material wealth, status, or influence, Burt is forced to trade being for doing. This is the materialist’s worldview where the endowed Imago Dei is subservient to the image we create for ourselves. Russell returns to this theme again and again throughout the film as the powerful status seekers attempt to fashion a world in their own image by means of wealth, while the vulnerable are left to search for belonging among the crumbs that fall off the table.

Perhaps too on the nose, Russell includes an acknowledgement of the eugenics program in 20th century America to further highlight this theme of utilitarian relationships and pragmatic power grabbing. The strong will survive, and sometimes by means of killing the weak and “undesirable.” If not in such overt ways as forced sterilization, then by means of a slow death as those with mental disorders are hidden from public view while those with fewer talents or the wrong skin color are sent off to war. This war is Burt’s temple and his own life is the sacrifice he’s willing to make in order to buy power and a place at the table of social connection. Who you are is never enough, but pay the correct fee, and acceptance can be within reach. This is the price the materialists demand, and it is no less prevalent in our day as it was for Burt.

Indeed, that’s a tool modern marketers know with a fierce expertise as they bombard humanity with efforts to whittle us into consumers and materialists who believe that the brands we purchase, and those we boycott, are a core aspect of our personal identity. Few writers have pointed this out with greater clarity than philosopher James K. A. Smith in his famous observation that the mall has become our present day temple where we experience “a religion of transaction, of exchange and communion.” He continues: 

And so we make our sacrifice, leave our donation, but in return receive something with solidity that is wrapped in the colors and symbols of the saints and the season. Released by the priest with a benediction, we make our way out of the chapel in a kind of denouement—not necessarily to leave the temple, but rather to continue contemplation and be invited into another chapel. For who could resist the tangible realities of the good life so abundantly and invitingly offered?

Amsterdam highlights a similarly hollow promise by exploring the human experience of those who are trapped in a material world that defines the “good life” exclusively in terms of power, wealth, and beauty, and head off to search together for the kind of true intimacy offered and found among the scarred and marginalized who have nothing to offer but their broken and lonely selves. While critics may accuse Russell of ham-fisting this thesis, Amsterdam’s critique of America’s infatuation with the material over the spiritual is an apt prophetic message for our time.

This is a message equally necessary for the Body of Christ, which is every bit as blinded to this same allure of consumerism and materialism. Peruse the sites of Christian publishers and you’ll find that the defining themes (i.e., the themes that sell) are theologically ignorant tropes about self-actualization in the form of empowerment, achievement, power, and success—but with a Christian veneer that implies God’s blessing over it all. In short, the church has long forgotten Paul’s exhortation to “boast in our weakness.” If our political atmosphere has taught us anything in recent years, weakness is no longer a Christian virtue.   

In an interview about the film, Christian Bale described it as “the absolute love of people who deal with pain and suffering in their lives with optimism and hope, and not becoming broken by life.” Playing the role of a scarred vet who dedicates his life to healing the emotional and physical wounds of forgotten people is nothing if not the gospel. If there’s another story that’s more compelling, or more desperately needed in our times, I cannot imagine what it might be. Could there be a more poignant message for the Church than a powerful and prophetic reminder that we worship a crucified King whose scars have become the very means of both our salvation and our communal vocation?

For those who follow Christ, our identity is not found in what we consume, nor is our calling to serve as marketers and peddlers of the gospel. Instead, as Amsterdam reminds us, we are scarred veterans who seek to bandage the wounded with the good news of a Jewish carpenter whose body was broken in the greatest war ever waged. Amidst a world scrolling through their phones in desperate search for the next fix by way of passive consumption, Martin Luther’s famous descriptor of the Christian life continues to reverberate: “We are all mere beggars showing other beggars where to find bread.”