Most American history is ambiguous.
Compare Howard Zinn’s The People’s History of the United States to any high school history textbook circulating in American public schools.
Like the Banana Wars or the invention of the telephone, history depends on perspective and who’s telling it.
The new film Amsterdam, starring Christian Bale, John David Washington, Margot Robbie, and Robert De Niro, attempts to retell an obscure episode in American history known as The Business Plot – a covert political conspiracy hedged to overthrow Franklin D.
Roosevelt.
Set in the early 1930s, seldom is this event included in history textbooks.
Although director David O.
Russell claimed the film covers “A lot of [what] really happened,” Amsterdam is more of a voyeurism exercise than a history lesson.
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