‘One Battle After Another’ Review: Paul Thomas Anderson’s Satirical Saga is the Defining American Film of the Decade [A]
When reviewing Thomas Pynchon’s postmodern tale of American transformation, “Vineland,” Frank McConnell of the LA Times described the book as, “Quite simply, one of those books that will make this world – our world, our daily chemical-preservative, plastic-wrapped bread – a little more tolerable, a little more human.” When it was rumored that American auteur Paul Thomas Anderson was crafting his own cinematic version of “Vineland,” many wondered just how true he would stay to the text. Would it be as directly inspired by Pynchon’s words as Inherent Vice? Or, would it be a bit looser, like his take on Upton Sinclair’s “Oil!” which evolved into the towering There Will Be Blood? In his latest film, One Battle After Another, Anderson crafts a postmodern masterpiece that’s completely his own, synthesizing the ethos of our contemporary era with the timelessness of Pynchon’s words. It’s his most expansive film yet, exploring and exposing the darkness of America, all while imbuing it with his signature humor to highlight the humanity of the people who have never stopped fighting to make it a little more tolerable.
One Battle After Another begins at the Otay Mesa Immigration Detention Center at the U.S.-Mexico Border, where Anderson’s camera fixates on Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) as she gazes down at the internment camp below, studying its layout and preparing to strike. Meanwhile, her partner in crime and in love, Ghetto Pat/Rocketman (Leonardo DiCaprio), is tasked with creating a fireworks and flares display that will distract the guards while they execute their plan. The two are part of a larger coalition known as the French 75, a group of revolutionaries who, as Perfidia says, are dedicated to ensuring that people have “free bodies, free choices, and are free from fucking fear.” On this particular night, the members of the French 75 are opening the gates of the detention center and freeing anywhere from 250 to 275 migrants inside. Just as Anderson does in his best relationship dramas (Phantom Thread comes to mind), he introduces the pair by first contrasting them. While Perfidia is the straw that stirs the drink, standing upright and strong, Ghetto Pat seems more like a revolutionary-for-hire, lying in wait in the grass with a series of explosives to put on a show. He isn’t the only one to want to put on a show, though, as Perfidia comes face to face with the master of operations at the camp, Lt. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn). Instead of simply tying him up and handcuffing him, Perfidia decides to take it a step further and exhibit the control she knows she has over him. She demands him to “get up,” and get it up he does, signaling a theme that courses through the veins of Anderson’s filmography (Magnolia, The Master): the shift from hubris to humiliation that keeps powerful men up at night.
After the operation, Lockjaw becomes obsessed with the activity of the French 75, as they continue to wreak havoc on the capitalist, oppressive institutions that the police and military are hellbent on preserving. Specifically, though, he fetishizes Perfidia, leering at her from afar. The power she held over him that night has stirred up a conflict in him, as his desire for her directly clashes with his white supremacist ideology. That exploration of racist fetishization is one of the many links between the works of Pynchon and Anderson, and Penn brilliantly taps into that to unlock some of Lockjaw’s most disturbing character traits. He’s terrifying, yet completely pathetic. It’s here that Penn also first demonstrates the intensity of his physical performance, creating a character with unforgettable facial quirks and movements, as well as a specific puffed-up stance and posture. The scenes between Penn and Taylor are also equal parts disturbing and hilarious, especially as Perfidia continues to dangle the carrot and tease out his lust for her. She matches Penn’s power with a lingering electricity. Anderson once again creates a contrast between Perfidia and one of the men in her orbit, but this time to tap into the specific push-pull between the violence within government power and the soul of the revolution.
In the meantime, Perfidia gives birth to a baby girl, Charlene. And while Pat tells her that they need to put their revolutionary days behind them to start raising their family, she just can’t resist. Soon, her luck runs out, and in the middle of a botched bank robbery, she is captured by the police. As a filmmaker, Anderson has always been gifted at depicting movement (i.e., running), but One Battle After Another sees him throttling himself into the action-adventure genre and creating some of the boldest sequences he has ever put to screen. Here, he designs a car chase that’s reminiscent of Michael Mann’s Heat, brought to life by frequent collaborator Jonny Greenwood’s jittery, evocative score and Andy Jurgensen’s propulsive editing. When Perfidia is in custody, cinematographer Michael Bauman (Licorice Pizza) incorporates a few of the film’s visual odes to one of Anderson’s favorite filmmakers, Jonathan Demme. As Perfidia sits in a hospital wheelchair with the men in law enforcement towering over her, and Lockjaw’s men pace the hallways of the detention centers in tight tracking shots, it’s impossible not to think of this film’s intersection of fear and humanism that permeates the core of The Silence of the Lambs.
It’s true that the film’s opening sequence and the montage that follows look eerily familiar to the events found in today’s political landscape, but Anderson quickly flexes and pivots, morphing the film into a sharper satire that uses that familiarity to ground a more expansive saga. The story jumps forward sixteen years in time, but because the first section of the movie feels so current, it almost seems as if Anderson is hurtling us into the future, only to make that feel strikingly timely too. It’s a genius trick of adaptation and tone, nudging the audience off balance, while signaling that nothing has ever really changed. Now, in the remaining French 75’s own form of witness protection, Ghetto Pat and Charlene have been living a new life in the green, idyllic enclave of the fictional Baktan Cross in the Pacific Northwest, under their new identities of Bob and Willa Ferguson (newcomer Chase Infiniti). Bob lives a low-key life of an often stoned single parent, where his revolutionary ideals still manage to creep into his life in funny ways, namely reminding Willa’s history teacher that there are “fucking slave owners everywhere,” as he looks at the presidential portraits on the classroom walls. Willa doesn’t know too much about her parents’ past in the French 75 and disregards most of Bob’s fears (cell phones) as bizarre quirks unique to her hippie Dad. That all changes when Lockjaw, after nearly two decades of hunting, gets a tip on Bob and Willa’s whereabouts and sets out to “tag and bag” Bob and apprehend Willa.
Lockjaw has a new impetus for hunting down Bob and Willa, though. Because of his tireless work to catch and kill the former members of the French 75, he’s caught the eye of the Christmas Adventurers’ Club, an exclusive group of men (led by a pitch-perfect Tony Goldwyn) that may be looking for a new member. Now, he has one final target needed to pursue membership, and an incredibly dark ulterior motive that is best not revealed here. A direct foil to the French 75, the Christmas Adventurers’ Club is a white supremacist group, and as its members describe, “a superior fraternity looking for racial purification.” Anderson and legendary costume designer Colleen Atwood dress the men in the type of uniform you’d find at a golf course or a country club, with pullovers, vests, and Brooks Brothers-inspired button-downs. The introduction of the Christmas Adventurers’ Club–first within the hotel walls at a member’s daughter’s black tie wedding and then in an outrageous system of labyrinthine tunnels leading to their club headquarters–is where Anderson’s hilarious, razor-sharp satire shocks and reverberates. There’s something chilling, yet comical, as the members of the club greet each other with, “Hail Saint Nick!” before discussing their own perceived superiority. Much like the way Anderson plays with time in the film, the Christmas Adventurers’ Club perfectly balances absurdity and realism, grounding and reminding the audience of the vile truth of our country in one minute, only to surprise us in the next.
The police and military strike when Willa and Bob are separated. She’s at a school dance with her friends, and he’s at home, high out of his mind, watching The Battle of Algiers (naturally). Away from her friends, Willa is confronted in the bathroom by an ex-French 75 member, Deandra (Regina Hall), who starts quoting sections of “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” to her as a code. Willa may not have believed much of what her Dad told her about their past and his fears, but she remembers this secret language and knows she has to trust Deandra. In her feature film debut, Infiniti feels right at home in Anderson’s sprawling cast of performers, especially in her scenes opposite Hall. Deandra is also a new kind of role for Hall, absent of the familiar comedic tones from her earlier work. Here, she has a warm, steady throughline that begins as an early, constant presence and evolves into a protective figure to Willa in Perfidia’s absence. Infiniti also imbues Willa with the same kind of resilient, stubborn attitude found in Perfidia and, together with DiCaprio, establishes the bones of an evolving father-daughter relationship. Anderson posits that as teenagers, we really think we know it all and that we’re the first to try something new. In reality, our parents were usually there first, and that spirit of freedom and revolution is inherited.
When Bob realizes that Lockjaw and the military are on the move to capture his daughter and that his worst fears have come to fruition, One Battle After Another evolves into a gripping, Pynchonian odyssey. With a dead phone that needs to be charged and a tunnel system far less sophisticated than the one belonging to the Christmas Adventurers’ Club, Bob emerges from the earth like a version of Daniel Plainview who has just left the dispensary. On the move, he seeks out Willa’s martial arts teacher, Sensei Sergio (Benicio Del Toro), to help him hide while he tries to make his way to the sanctuary point. Unfortunately for Bob, he’s fried his brain with substances over the years and cannot remember the French 75 greetings that he needs to get the coordinates of his destination. It’s no secret that DiCaprio has wanted to work with Anderson for over twenty years, and, after his work in One Battle After Another, it’s clear to see why he was so eager. DiCaprio plays Bob as an exasperated has-been, bumbling around in the hopes of finding his former self and his daughter. It’s an incredibly physical performance that has shades of his work in The Wolf of Wall Street and Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, yet showcases facets of his talent that haven’t been seen on screen before. He also pulls off the tricky balancing act of nailing every comedic bit in the script, while still creating the emotional anchor to Anderson’s sprawling, chaotic creation.
Size has always been important to Anderson (just ask Dirk Diggler), and One Battle After Another is an epic work of art that feels like cinematic rebellion. Experimenting with the rare VistaVision format, he crafts a film reminiscent of the epic works of John Ford and David Lean, while creating something wholly daring and original that just might be his magnum opus. His filmmaking blends the formalism of The Master and the exuberance of Boogie Nights, yet it still feels like he is continuously mining new territory here, pushing himself to confront the thorny, dark heart of America that most modern filmmakers are too afraid to tackle head-on. But just as he ventures into that heart of darkness, he also finds the light. Found family is a core theme that spans Anderson’s filmography, and here he wonders what might happen if someone were to force that family apart. Who might come to an ex-revolutionary’s aid? What’s particularly striking about the film is that, amidst the terror and state violence, Black and Latino characters are the people sticking their necks out to shield and guide Bob to his daughter. Yes, it’s difficult to disband a group of revolutionaries (and the former members do come to Bob’s aid), but the beauty of One Battle After Another is just how many new voices are out there and eager to join the revolution.
As Anderson pushes the story into its action-packed finale, he takes his audience on one final ride in the most thrilling car chase since George Miller’s Mad Max saga. What Anderson does with the camera is a marvel, playing brilliantly off of Greenwood’s grand, ever-evolving score and the natural playground of the desert hills. But even with its breakneck pace and flawless action set pieces, the heart of One Battle After Another lies in a story between a father and his daughter. Creating characters who manage to pull through no matter their circumstances is one of Anderson’s many specialties, but here he seems to evolve that into something more personal. Even with the intensity in a film that stems from America’s most insidious institutions and the people who run them, there is a sense of hope and a revolutionary spirit that runs through it all. Time bends and breaks, things change drastically and very little, and it seems that Anderson is thinking about his place in that. It’s a scary, surprising, beautiful thing to raise an American girl.
Grade: A
Warner Bros will release One Battle After Another only in theaters (including 70mm, VistaVision and IMAX where available) on September 26.
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