Is One Battle After Another the film of the year? Look

Every critic who is doing his job carefully will tell you the same thing about One Battle After Another. O furious, hilarious and ambitious epic of Paul Thomas Anderson is the first contemporary film by the filmmaker, responsible for Black Blood e The Masteramong others, since Bound in Love back there in 2002. There, there was a feature film driven by a unique understanding of the actor cast by PTA for his version of a timeless romantic comedy. Here, there is something urgently announced. A living, pulsating document, with an unmistakable focus on the here and now. The kind of thing that could define a century.

From the foreground – when Perfidia (Teyana Taylor) examines an immigrant internment camp in Los Angeles as the sun sets – onwards, One Battle After Another it seems to have been generated instantly, but not because it sounds like a generic product made without a soul by an artificial intelligence, but because it transports to the screen the nervous energy with which we live daily; a mix of tiredness and anxiety that arises from existing, exactly as the title suggests, in a constant state of struggle. The choice to jump towards the present gives the film a touch of curiosity when we talk about the director. Why this cut? Why this film? Was this the director’s response to doubts about his ability to deal with the internet age, or did PTA feel the need to face the current moment for some other reason?

After all, One Battle After Another is inspired by Vinelanda dense and sparse work by Thomas Pynchon which depicts the USA at the time of Reagan as an environment driven by television, drugs and remnants of the hippie movement. Less of an adaptation and more of a new interpretation of what the country’s battlefields are today (immigration, police and, well, drugs), the film makes the more than conscious decision to transport the elements of that narrative to the very troubled scenario of politics in the 21st Century.

Of course, there is a political charge in other Paul Thomas Anderson films. In particular his duo of masterpieces about key moments in the USA in the 20th Century, both mentioned in the first paragraph of this text, the director shows how greedy men (in Black Blood), manipulators (in The Master) and egocentric (both of us) guided the existence of that land. This subject, however, has never been as naked in the filmmaker’s career as it is here. If those seemed to exorcise his anger, this one shows that the feeling has returned with a vengeance, suggesting that the 2020s are, for him, as essential as the discovery of oil or the search for meaning in World War II. While words like “Republican” and “Democrat” are never uttered, the force that underlines each instance of A Battle it comes from a visible frustration with modern dilemmas, and an even greater concern about what comes next.

This daily life in trouble, however, is something that Perfidia, in the most intimate of intimates, enjoys. She feels a (sometimes literal) desire to be in the trenches, blowing up banks and challenging the system, so much so that it’s difficult to say if she discovered this after joining the cause of the revolutionary group French 75, or if she only took on these ideals because they would give space for this proximity to danger. There is no doubt that she believes in what she stands for, but this desire for risk – something that often makes her a powerful weapon for revolution – is also what makes her so dangerous to those around her, especially her beloved “Ghetto” Pat “Rocket Man”, a detonation expert played in a comically vulnerable way by Leonardo DiCaprio.

Pat and Perfidia’s life is, appropriately, a bomb counting down, and the timer seems to reset when the two have a daughter and the woman puts her most dangerous instincts ahead of caring for the girl. We won’t go into plot details, but it’s fair to say that, 16 years after that child was born, Perfidia is no longer around, and Pat is left to care for the now-teenage Willa (Chase Infiniti) alone, a task that only gets worse after Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn) puts the family in the crosshairs.

This creates a chase film with a Western flavor, a political thriller feel and a taste for action, with scenes that include at least one explicit reference to Tom Cruise, as well as a climax that transforms – almost literally – the Californian desert into a rollercoaster of increasing tension. For something bubbling with dense ideas throughout its nearly three-hour runtime, One Battle After Another is miraculously easy to digest, largely due to the comedic streak embodied by DiCaprio, firm and strong in his mission to play dirty slobs who represent the antithesis of his heartthrob status. When we meet Pat again, marijuana and alcohol have fried his brain to the point where he forgets passwords that could identify him as a member of the resistance, a serious problem given his need for help to survive Lockjaw’s attack on the city of Baktan Cross, where he is hiding with Willa.

This jocular air is essential to balance the sides of the film. There’s no doubt who the story’s villains are, and for every caricature brought to life by DiCaprio, Sean Penn has an even more exaggerated one up his sleeve. Even the way he you It’s a (great) joke. But Anderson’s approach to revolutionaries is precisely what prevents One Battle After Another of gaining pedantic tones. It’s not that the director is making fun of those who dare to resist – the “sensei” experienced by Benicio del Toro in a seemingly impossible zen is easily the most competent character in the entire work – but not sacrificing the film’s success as art to achieve a comfortable statement means that any speeches here are delivered genuinely and, for something full of sarcasm, with powerful honesty.

Of these Themes with a capital T, none is greater than an unfortunately correct diagnosis of the post-Industrial Revolution world that Anderson has been working on throughout his filmography. One Battle After Another is the frenetic audiovisual representation of the conclusion stamped in its own title, an externalization of the awareness that the challenges of life – singular or collective – do not cease, and nothing represents this better than Willa. From the quiet anger that permeates Infiniti’s eyes to the almost genetic ease with which Perfidia’s daughter approaches firearms, she appears to have been forged by generation after generation of conflict.

It’s no wonder then that A Battle After the other stages its cycles of chaos with a simple motivator of a father and daughter trying to reunite. Much of the film concerns itself with Pat and Willa fighting not to be separated. This contrast, between grand scope and personal menace, gives the film a human heart we can hold onto amid the mess, and valorizes the fight for the future. For Paul Thomas Anderson, any shreds of hope – not for a world without suffering, and knowing that our children will suffer is terrifying, but for one that yet they have a chance – they are in the next generation; or better said, in the next battle.

One Battle After Another

One Battle After Another

Again:
2025

Country:
USA

Classification:

16 years old

Duration:
170 min

Direction:

Paul Thomas Anderson

Road map:

Paul Thomas Anderson

List:

Benicio del Toro, Chase Infiniti, Teyana Taylor, Sean Penn, Leonardo DiCaprio, Regina Hall

Where to watch: