PTA delivers his (latest) magnum opus with “One Battle After Another”
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
Written by Paul Thomas Anderson
Based on Vineland by Thomas Pynchon
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, and Chase Infiniti
It’s difficult to brand any of Paul Thomas Anderson’s films his true magnum opus; such is the nature of the beast when discussing a director with more truly great films than some directors has good ones. We might say There Will Be Blood for its titanic Daniel Day-Lewis performance and enduring themes, but where does that leave Magnolia or The Master or Phantom Thread? What about the fact that he made a movie as confident as Boogie Nights when he was in his mid-twenties? There’s a danger when talking about a new release whose director has a resume that we might undervalue or overvalue it; we have to keep in mind both recency bias and the false idea that nothing can ever replace There Will Be Blood, The Master, et al, to let neither excitement or disappointment rule us.
And yet, having seen One Battle After Another twice now, I find it impossible to comprehend as anything other than Anderson’s finest work yet. It’s an evolution of his style that slots effortlessly into his pre-existing themes—especially the exploration of deeply flawed family units that’s been the pivot point of his career since Hard Eight—even as it advances them to new heights. At different moments, it plays like a cross between The Big Lebowski, Burn After Reading, and The Battle of Algiers, with each facet of its construction as strong as the last. It is a story of revolution set against labyrinthine plots (and occasionally, actual underground labyrinths), of people kept in both gilded and literal cages, and ultimately, of what makes a fight worth fighting. It is absurd and high-octane and remarkably clear-eyed about the state of America. It left me feeling so wired, I was confident walking out of the theater I could’ve run through a solid brick wall. I loved every second of it.
Our story is centered on Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio, Killers of the Flower Moon), an ex-revolutionary living in hiding with his daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti, Presumed Innocent), who must re-enter the world when an old nemesis, Colonel Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn, Daddio), discovers their location and instigates a citywide crackdown as a pretext to hunt them down. This is where Anderson does the bulk of his work thematically, as he contrasts the well-polished fascism of Lockjaw and his compatriots against a ramshackle militia trying to save as many people as they can from the advance. Florencia Martin’s (Babylon) stellar production design gives his ideas perfect form, embodying the military through a series of sterile hallways, conference rooms, and offices while Bob’s adopted hometown of Baktan Cross seems much livelier by comparison. Anderson skewers both, particularly white progressives’ obsession with the aesthetics of resistance over the genuine article, but he never loses sight of the fact that the side leveraging state violence for the sake of personal grievance and bruised ego is much, much, much worse even as it’s much, much, much better equipped.
This is DiCaprio in full Wolf of Wall Street-quaaludes mode, another fine entry in his new career fascination with playing the biggest losers ever committed to film. In his hands, Bob is a man in the midst of a never-ending breakdown, desperate to find his daughter and terrified about what the world might turn her into. There’s a great deal of heart to him, but he’s also as funny as he’s ever been, ranting at his fellow revolutionaries and doing his best to keep his high going because at this point, drugs and booze might be the only thing keeping him on his feet. The moment where he realizes the walls are closing in on him is one of the single funniest things you’ll see this year.
Meanwhile, Penn plays Lockjaw as what I can only describe as a Tim Robinson character: all self-serving bluster and barely contained rage. Like Bob, he’s keenly aware of his own shortcomings, but where Bob has retreated inward into narcotics-fueled paranoia, Lockjaw has spent his life forcing his will on the people he sees as beneath him to reinforce his image of himself as the sort of man on top of the social pyramid. He’s vile, terrifying, and endlessly pathetic, and Penn brings him to life with such perfectly measured insanity that to even watch him walk across a room becomes a delight.
The conflict between these two provides One Battle After Another with its engine, and once their pursuit begins, it doesn’t let up for a frame of its nearly three hours. Anderson populates Bob and Lockjaw’s world with an assortment of fascinating side characters, each with their own stories—indeed, Anderson wrote the script originally as a collection of individual shorts, then melded them together into a cohesive whole—ensuring there’s never a dull moment. None are more entertaining than the inimitably cool Benecio del Toro (The Phoenician Scheme) as perhaps the most spin-offable character of the year, a local leader in the immigrant community who decides on a whim that, sure, why not, helping his friend evade the government sounds like a fun use of a couple days, he’s only managing a large-scale evacuation otherwise.
Still, for all its ideas of revolution and revolutionaries, One Battle After Another may be best enjoyed as a sensory experience, and while I fall short of calling it an action movie as other critics have, it certainly has more in common with the genre than Anderson’s previous work and stands as his most accessible work for its endlessly enthralling shifts between propulsive thrill ride and hysterical comedy. It culminates in a breathlessly tense climax that makes perfect use of the VistaVision format for a French Connection-inspired car chase where you feel every dip and rise in the road. It isn’t just the most heart-in-your-throat nerve-wracking sequence of the year, its one of the most jaw dropping bits of filmmaking I’ve seen this decade, the perfect way to cap off a major work.
Rating: A
One Battle After Another is now playing in theaters. You can watch the trailer here.
