We All Went Down to Amsterdam
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All the characters meditate in some way on the issue of awareness without understanding its application to themselves–which is, of course, the point. In a hilarious soliloquy, Cox trashes It’s a Wonderful Life (“It’s about a white man who owns a bank, so right away I’m awash in sympathy”) and proposes a sequel where Jimmy Stewart sees all the bad things that wouldn’t have happened if he’d never been born–the citizens who wouldn’t have been deprived, the kids who wouldn’t have been traumatized. Meanwhile Wood complains about his wife’s constant accusations that he planned to leave, defending his decision to do so by saying, “I told her, ‘You keep talking about it, I’m going to do it!’” Even the painfully self-conscious Man can’t seem to grasp that his habit of secretly recording others’ words makes them feel even more awkward than he does.
It’s a harsh world Norris has created. If we were truly aware of the costs our lives imposed on other people, we wouldn’t be able to function at all. Even leaving aside large social issues–how whites need to ignore the price blacks pay for the lives we lead–every individual makes decisions that injure someone else. Parents, especially, can’t help but hurt their children simply by virtue of being the ones who touch them the most.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying that Amy Morton’s direction is superb. Norris provides plenty of traps and blind alleys, but she navigates them with ease, managing major tone shifts and reversals without breaking a sweat. It’s like watching a world-class surfer at work on the perfect wave.
