It has been 7 years since David O. Russell released his last film, Joy , which despite having given Jennifer Lawrence her fourth Oscar nomination, failed to recover its cost of 60 million euros in its American screening. With a record that includes hits both at the box office and in the award race such as The Bright Side of Things, The Fighter, Three Kings, Flirting with Disaster and The Great American Swindle, when the director decided to use a dark incident from American history in the 1930s to create a new farce, not only did it find someone willing to finance its bulging budget, but there were also stars willing to participate.
In addition to debutants in his filmography such as John David Washington and Margot Robbie, old acquaintances such as Robert De Niro and Christian Bale were added, in a cast that also includes Rami Malek, Anya Taylor-Joy, Taylor Swift, Michael Shannon, Chris Rock, Zoe Saldana, Mike Myers or Matthias Schoenaerts, in a clear demonstration that O.Russell is a magnet for actors.
But at the origin of Amsterdam there were only the director and Bale. After a special screening at the El Capitan cinema in Hollywood, the old collaborators recalled the beginning of the adventure. "With Christian we began to talk more than 6 years ago about the possibility of creating an original character," said the filmmaker, later adding: "He wanted me to be a doctor and then he added two great friends with whom he was going to have the type of friendship with which one always dreams, in which they are willing to do anything to help you. This doctor creates medicines for him and his friends. We wrote many versions.”
Bale, at his side confirms: “in total there were about 16. I always proposed parliaments that David shaped”. In the film, Bale's character, Burt Berendsen, meets Washington's character, Harold Woodman, on the front lines during World War I.
The third of the group, Valerie Voze, played by Robbie, is the nurse who takes care of their serious injuries in a field infirmary. “In a way I wrote the script as if it were a novel. It might as well have been,” admits Russell. And he explains: “There were other chapters that we left out that were set in the sixties. We came up with the version we liked and then shot it as if a group of musicians got together because they want to play together." Bale adds that the experience of working in Amsterdam is nothing like what he's done before: “I got to sit down with this friend and witness him write the whole script. We had a wonderful time. We watched documentaries together, listened to music and read books, learning about situations in the history of the United States that I knew nothing about,” he says, referring to the alleged coup attempt in Washington DC in 1933 by a group of billionaires. with Nazi sympathies.
The British actor then explained that the way of working on the set significantly changed what was originally in the script. “David told Chivo Lubetzki to film us to see what would happen. It wasn't necessarily improvisation, because we had the dialogue that he had written, but many times we just followed the scene. That's what I like about working with David. We always start from the script, but let it evolve. It's all part of knowing your character perfectly."
Bale wasn't the only one to work that way. As O.Russell reveals, Robbie also enjoyed this kind of filmmaking: “Not only did Margot learn to speak French, but she did a lot of the art you see in the film at her house during the pandemic. Linda Sterling, a visual artist working in England, also participated, but Margot played her part. Having the actors know their roles so well allows you to try out different versions of each scene, knowing your actors won't stray from the characters they've been living with for years. John David Washington told me that he believed he hadn't met the real Christian until he finished filming, because the one on set was his character."
Adds Bale: “I'm not one to look in the mirror or know exactly what I'm doing. I'm not a method actor like De Niro, who studied with Lee Strasberg. I only studied two days at the Young Men's Christian Association. I just invent as the story progresses, in no particular order. The only thing I can say is that I love Burt, my character. I loved playing him. I would like to have you as a friend. I miss you. And the pact they have between them is beautiful. The good thing about this experience is that I had a lot of time to prepare Burt, and then I just watched what happened on set. In that sense it is beautiful when the character has gotten into your bones. This is how the best moments of a film are generated.”
And Russell notes: “In the same way that Billy Wilder wrote for Jack Lemmon, I write for Christian. He works intuitively. Lemmon said his wife once asked why she said yes to Wilder before he wrote the script. And he told her that she knew Billy was going to write a great character for him. In that sense, my job is to create a great character that lives up to Christian. I know what he is attracted to and what interests us both.”
