One Battle After Another is a masterpiece as it speeds through numerous genres with glee, while deftly dissecting the political extremism at the heart of modern-day America with a razor-sharp scalpel, ferocious energy and a wry smile.
The former United States Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, John W. Gardner (1912 – 2002), once said, “Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world’s ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all”. I wonder what Gardner would make of America today? The United States has always been a country of extremes, and it could be argued that the Civil War never really ended in 1865, simply morphing into state divisions, fragmented politics and debates regarding the place of the United States of America on the world stage.
The United States of America is a nation born from colonialism, founded on blood, and built by immigrants from all over the globe. Yet, it’s also a country where immigrants are now rounded up by ICE agents and placed in detention centres or shipped to foreign prisons, where Christian nationalist ideology shapes policy and practice, and government and billionaires stoke division for their own political gain. It is a country that has fallen into the exact trap Gardner warned of on both the left and right of politics, and it’s threatening to take many other countries with it.
Many will describe Paul Thomas Anderson’s blisteringly sharp film One Battle After Another as a dystopian movie, a warning of what is to come if America continues down the road it is on. However, the themes present in Anderson’s movie are already a reality. While he may dial them up to ten, One Battle After Another isn’t a warning about the future; it’s a defiant call to apply the brakes now before it’s too late.
The terms MAGA and Antifa may not appear in Anderson’s film, but the reality of these movements and the fact that extremism breeds extremism threads through One Battle After Another, as does a long history of political, state, religious, and ideological conflict that stretches back to the very founding of the United States. But Anderson’s film also embraces the character of the country, it’s a live wire, full to the brim of rambunctious energy, free-wheeling charm, cutting humour and a chaotic spirit of both division and unity.
From the opening scenes, Anderson, alongside Michael Bauman, director of photography, Andy Jurgensen, editor and a sublime ensemble cast, put the pedal to the metal and don’t release it for two hours and forty-one minutes. Opening with a revolutionary group known as ‘French 75’ raiding an immigrant holding facility on the Mexico-U.S. border, the fiery Group leader, Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), sexually humiliates the seemingly willing camp commander Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn) as her comrades, including her partner Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio), and Deandra (Regina Hall) free the captives.
It’s clear from these opening scenes that America is now a state where the army and police have merged into one force with few rules to guide them, and ‘French 75’ not only seeks to overthrow them but the right-wing leaders to whom they bow. Perfidia is dynamite, and while Bob loves her, he knows he can’t control her. But he doesn’t know she has spotted a weakness in the armed forces command, the creepy Lockjaw, who was clearly excited by the humiliation at the base. Therefore, she plays with his sexual desires in the hope of controlling him later down the line. Jump forward a few months, and Perfidia is pregnant and preparing for the next battle, one that will ultimately prove to be her undoing.
Sixteen years later, Willa (Chase Infiniti), the child of Perfidia, is now a teenager living with Bob, a drug and booze addicted, edgy but loving and caring single dad, still living in the shadow of French 75 and the disappearance of Perfidia years before. Meanwhile, the Machiavellian Lockjaw remains determined to find the pair, slowly working his way through ‘French 75’ members in an attempt to locate them, while at the same time cementing his place in a prestigious white supremacy group that pulls the strings of American politics.
The hunt is nearing its conclusion for Lockjaw as he homes in on their location after years of brutally picking off Bob’s old comrades. It’s a hunt that will see Willa learn the truth about her mother and the secrets she took to her grave, and Bob, with the help of Willa’s sensei, Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro), will rediscover his revolutionary past as a destiny he couldn’t avoid comes knocking.
One Battle After Another is the second Anderson film to be influenced by a Thomas Pynchon novel, the first being Inherent Vice (2014). This time it’s ‘Vineland’, a book that deftly explored the aftermath of the 1960s counterculture in the United States and the innate ability of the US government to embrace oppression. Anderson may steer a different course in adapting Pynchon’s story, but its heart is firmly rooted in the themes of the novel.
One Battle After Another is a story about history, erasure, control, and uneasy rebellion in the face of political and military might. It’s polemic yet cutting, darkly comic yet petrifying and controlled yet utterly uncontrollable. Jonny Greenwood’s score perfectly reflects the chaotic, free-wheeling nature of Anderson’s masterpiece and becomes a character in its own right throughout. At the same time, the choice of VistaVision immerses the audience in the beauty, darkness, energy and depth of this exciting fusion of genres and themes.
That fusion of genres and themes brings me to the truly electric performances at the heart of Anderson’s film. From DiCaprio’s edgy, fumbling, and tender take on an ex-revolutionary who was never quite sure of his role and place, and still isn’t, to Penn’s oddball, dangerous and opportunist fascist and Benicio del Toro’s calm and controlled sensei, every performance is cinematic gold. Add the emotionally intuitive and fiery performance of Chase Infiniti in her first significant feature film role, and One Battle After Another could well scoop up more than a few major awards in the upcoming season.
Paul Thomas Anderson has brought us some of the most innovative, striking and enthralling films of the past thirty years. One Battle After Another is one of his best. It’s a masterpiece as it speeds through numerous genres with glee, while deftly dissecting the political extremism at the heart of modern-day America with a razor-sharp scalpel, ferocious energy and a wry smile.
One Battle After Another is released in cinemas nationwide on September 26. Odeon Leicester Square will host exclusive VistaVision screenings with IMAX 70mm screenings at BFI IMAX.
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