One Battle After Another
The one film of Paul Thomas Anderson’s I still have not seen is his 2014 film, “Inherent Vice.” That is also inspired by the works of Thomas Pynchon, and I’ve always gotten the feeling as though- even for some PTA acolytes- it is lesser fare. Would a familiarity to the material help me see the greatness others have seen in “One Battle After Another?” I do not know- and maybe repeat viewings will do that- but for now, Anderson’s latest didn’t really feel as on target to me as others have made it seem.
I think Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” is one of the most politically attuned films of the 21st Century; how PTA accomplished that was not by focusing directly on politics, and looking instead at two powerful forces in it- charismatic evangelical preaches and staunch capitalists, and what happens when they are on a collision course towards one another. (How it became even more relevant than it already was during the GWB era is sad and astonishing.) Much like Ari Aster’s “Eddington” earlier this year, Anderson is looking at an America filled with hypocrisy, with well meaning rebels and unseen forces putting their thumbs on the scale of influence, and I think it is a trickier balance to achieve. I think he achieves it better than Aster does- who tried to be too “on the nose” with the politics of the time- but I also think he gets tripped up at times. I was unquestionably entertained, however.
The film begins with a woman on the run. Or rather, she’s on a run, doing surveillance of an immigration detention center in California. The woman is Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), and she is part of a revolutionary collective known as French 75. Also a part of the collective is Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, whom we will know mostly as Bob throughout the film. He is the explosives expert in the group, and when they break people out of the center, that is when Perfidia first meets Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), who’s in charge at the center, and whom Perfidia humiliates in a way he cannot get enough of. It will not be their last encounter; eventually, she will become pregnant and have a baby girl, whom Bob- her significant other- will raise after Perfidia is taken into custody. Sixteen years will pass, and Lockjaw’s search for the daughter- who goes by the name Willa (Chase Infiniti), and lives with Bob in a sanctuary city, will bring the past back to light, and some harsh truths left uncovered.
“One Battle After Another” is, at its core, the struggle to survive in a world where it feels as though the deck is stacked against you, whether by personal choices or outside forces. There is a lot of explicitly political material in the film, but its strongest sequences have to do with personal ramifications of choices characters have made. We get moments of tense drama in the first interaction between Lockjaw and Willa; moments of emotional turmoil when Bob and Willa first have to disappear after Perfidia is caught after a volatile bank robbery gone awry; and moments of wicked humor, such as when Bob finds himself on the run after Lockjaw comes to the sanctuary city he and Willa are hid in, and his years of chronic drug use have caused him to forget a key phrase to getting the information he needs so that he can be reunited with Willa, who was at a dance, at the time. Anderson has typically operated in a more straightforward genre in his previous films; here, he balances a lot of them together with the precision of a seasoned filmmaker.
I’ve written before about how I find myself mixed on PTA’s films that operate on a more sprawling, ensemble canvas vs. ones that more focus on particular character arcs (which is where my favorite films of his lie). This film is kind of in between the two- though leaning more towards the ensemble epics of “Boogie Nights” and “Magnolia”- but there’s a narrative control and consistency to where its focus should lie that puts it above those earlier films for me, though still behind the likes of “There Will Be Blood,” “Phantom Thread,” “Punch-Drunk Love” and “The Master.” As I’ve thought about the film more, I find myself admiring its narrative thrust more than I did after immediately watching it, and how the focus is primarily on the characters we’re most drawn to- Bob, Willa, and Lockjaw, with Perfidia’s memory being a key motivator for all. The performances in this film are strong all around, although if you find yourself thinking DiCaprio and Penn on the bottom of the main selection of the cast, I wouldn’t blame you; there are times when they take their character’s personalities to 11, and not in a good way. Among the men, Benicio Del Toro is wonderful as Willa’s karate instructor, who also has some secrets to hide from someone like Lockjaw as well, but it’s the main women in this film who crackle the most. Taylor leaves a vivid impression of a woman whose ideals led her down one path, but the sense of control she has over Lockjaw inspires another one. Infiniti is the breakout star of this film; she brings a sense of rebellion that reminds everyone who knew her mother of her mother, but she has her own personality that makes us think she will be the better example of fighting the good fight in the end. As Deandra, another former French 75 soldier who helps Willa escape, Regina Hall dazzles, especially when it’s her that has to reveal some harsh truths to Willa.
Much will be made about the political landscape of “One Battle After Another,” and I will admit to being less interested in that aspect of it; there are things that will mirror our modern political moment, as well as other things that feel pulled from an earlier time period, and others still that just feel like fantasy to get a conversation going. What has lingered with me is the way Anderson follows each character to a natural end, given the arc of the film’s narrative. That doesn’t mean we’ll find ourselves personally satisfied with each one, but we understand how they get there, and I’ll always be appreciative of that in a film.
