The hardcore movie lover crowd have had nothing but bad things to say about David Zaslav, the much loathed president of Warner Bros. Discovery, and none of it was exactly unearned. However, I'll give the ignorant asshole this much: Probably out of a desire for some award season glamour, he did sign off on big budgets on not the most commercial projects from beloved filmmakers. At the end of the day, all the studio bullshit and behind-the-scenes drama doesn't matter. It's the movies that last. And Paul Thomas Anderson's next movie was always likely to last. He is a highly lauded auteur. When news broke that he would be making a movie with Leonardo DiCaprio, much mystery surrounded it. There were some reports that it was an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's novel, “Vineland.” When the title was finally revealed as “One Battle After Another,” it was finally understood to be more inspired by the book than directly adapting it. After much scrutiny from the folks who treat movies like it's sport betting, “one Battle After Another” was ultimately deemed a box office flop. But who cares, because the movie is there forever now and a lot of people sure seem to love it.
“Ghetto” Pat was once a member of French 75, a group of underground revolutionaries who pulled stunts like freeing detainees from a prison camp or blowing up cop cars. Pat was the explosive guy and Perfidia, his partner and lover, was a woman of action. They were doggedly pursued by Colonel Lockjaw who, despite his racist beliefs, was sexually obsessed with Perfidia. Pat and Perfidia would attempt to settle down, raising the child she gave birth to together, but she eventually went back on the run. Sixteen years later, Pat – now living under the name Bob Fergusen – is a burn-out who seems widely disliked by Willa, his mixed race daughter. She heads out to a concert with some friends. They don't know that Lockjaw is attempting to join a secret order of white supremacists. That Willa is his daughter, from a forced sexual encounter with Perfidia. That his membership in the Christmas Adventurers Club is threatened by him having a mixed race daughter, that he's leading a police raid into the city to find the girl. Soon, Pat is attempting to locate where the girl has been taken and find her before Lockjaw does.
I wasn't a big fan of Anderson's previous Pynchon adaptation, “Inherent Vice,” finding it to be too shaggy and stoned-out in its humor to appeal to me. Comes with the territory with that, I know. Whatever you think about Pynchon, I think you can agree that the author has an ear for cool sounding code names. I haven't read “Vineland” and can't attest to how much of “One Battle After Another” is taken from it. However, the various code names and underground jargon in the film – Rocket Man, Junglepussy, Mae West, Lady Champagne – have that Pynchon-esque quality of being both absurd and... Kind of cool. The same is true of the film's preoccupation with the secret codes the French 75 members used to contact each other, which include a shout-out to the Hooterville trilogy. “One Battle After Another” is a movie with nuns firing machine guns, nun-chucks, skateboards, a dojo, bombs. This shit is, you could say, rad. It's all kind of silly and funny but it's also cool as fuck.
But do you know what's definitely not cool as fuck? In “One Battle After Another,” the police and the government they work for are depicted as openly racist institutions. The authority figures are obsessed with punishing anyone darker skinned than them, every official action they make merely a flimsy justification to enforce their racist ideology. Ya know, like in real life. Immigrants are depicted as persecuted innocents, simply trying to live, a scapegoat totally outmatched by an infinitely powerful system. And violence against the government who enforces these rules is shown as never less than justified. I'm not smart enough to know if this actually means anything but a 130 million dollar studio movie starring A-listers preaching an openly pro-direct action message like that is surprising, at the very least.
Like I said, the racist organizations in “One Battle After Another” don't pretend to have any deeper motivation for their relentless persecution of non-white people than preserving their own racial purity. And this is, it almost goes without saying, bullshit. When we meet Lockjaw, he's already lusting after Perfidia. Everything he ultimately does in the second half is motivated by his desire to cover up the fact that he has a mixed race child. In other words, this guy clearly doesn't actually believe the things he's saying. At least not so much that it overwhelms the horniness he feels for a black woman. It's also notable that the white supremacist cabal Lockjaw tries to join is called the Christmas Adventurers Club and says shit like “All hail Saint Nicholas!” This group is depicted as powerful. They have tentacles in all sectors of the government and are able to organize armed responses in minutes. They are a force to be reckoned with... But they are still fucking goofy losers. The film is simply reflecting reality here, as the grotesque absurdities of the Trump era have made it very clear how the most monstrously evil people often tend to also be clownish buffoons.
Lockjaw's uncontrollable lust for a woman of color does not seem to be an especially unusual status for an otherwise highly racist man. I suppose there is something in human nature, where we inevitably eroticize that which we have deemed forbidden. Lockjaw presents himself as a proud macho warrior man, wearing a tight shirt that shows off his guns. When he's around Perfidia, however, he seems to become sexually submissive. In the bedroom is the only place where the racist is willing to give up power. This is not the only example in the film. After Willa is born, Perfidia grows tired of motherhood, of being nothing but a parent now, and leaves. The parallels between the power imbalances and attempts to correct them in the characters' personal lives are impossible to untangle from their struggles for political power too. Maybe that's all it has ever been about. I don't know what that means exactly but it's an interesting observation.
“Ghetto” Pat was once a member of French 75, a group of underground revolutionaries who pulled stunts like freeing detainees from a prison camp or blowing up cop cars. Pat was the explosive guy and Perfidia, his partner and lover, was a woman of action. They were doggedly pursued by Colonel Lockjaw who, despite his racist beliefs, was sexually obsessed with Perfidia. Pat and Perfidia would attempt to settle down, raising the child she gave birth to together, but she eventually went back on the run. Sixteen years later, Pat – now living under the name Bob Fergusen – is a burn-out who seems widely disliked by Willa, his mixed race daughter. She heads out to a concert with some friends. They don't know that Lockjaw is attempting to join a secret order of white supremacists. That Willa is his daughter, from a forced sexual encounter with Perfidia. That his membership in the Christmas Adventurers Club is threatened by him having a mixed race daughter, that he's leading a police raid into the city to find the girl. Soon, Pat is attempting to locate where the girl has been taken and find her before Lockjaw does.
I wasn't a big fan of Anderson's previous Pynchon adaptation, “Inherent Vice,” finding it to be too shaggy and stoned-out in its humor to appeal to me. Comes with the territory with that, I know. Whatever you think about Pynchon, I think you can agree that the author has an ear for cool sounding code names. I haven't read “Vineland” and can't attest to how much of “One Battle After Another” is taken from it. However, the various code names and underground jargon in the film – Rocket Man, Junglepussy, Mae West, Lady Champagne – have that Pynchon-esque quality of being both absurd and... Kind of cool. The same is true of the film's preoccupation with the secret codes the French 75 members used to contact each other, which include a shout-out to the Hooterville trilogy. “One Battle After Another” is a movie with nuns firing machine guns, nun-chucks, skateboards, a dojo, bombs. This shit is, you could say, rad. It's all kind of silly and funny but it's also cool as fuck.
Like I said, the racist organizations in “One Battle After Another” don't pretend to have any deeper motivation for their relentless persecution of non-white people than preserving their own racial purity. And this is, it almost goes without saying, bullshit. When we meet Lockjaw, he's already lusting after Perfidia. Everything he ultimately does in the second half is motivated by his desire to cover up the fact that he has a mixed race child. In other words, this guy clearly doesn't actually believe the things he's saying. At least not so much that it overwhelms the horniness he feels for a black woman. It's also notable that the white supremacist cabal Lockjaw tries to join is called the Christmas Adventurers Club and says shit like “All hail Saint Nicholas!” This group is depicted as powerful. They have tentacles in all sectors of the government and are able to organize armed responses in minutes. They are a force to be reckoned with... But they are still fucking goofy losers. The film is simply reflecting reality here, as the grotesque absurdities of the Trump era have made it very clear how the most monstrously evil people often tend to also be clownish buffoons.
Lockjaw's uncontrollable lust for a woman of color does not seem to be an especially unusual status for an otherwise highly racist man. I suppose there is something in human nature, where we inevitably eroticize that which we have deemed forbidden. Lockjaw presents himself as a proud macho warrior man, wearing a tight shirt that shows off his guns. When he's around Perfidia, however, he seems to become sexually submissive. In the bedroom is the only place where the racist is willing to give up power. This is not the only example in the film. After Willa is born, Perfidia grows tired of motherhood, of being nothing but a parent now, and leaves. The parallels between the power imbalances and attempts to correct them in the characters' personal lives are impossible to untangle from their struggles for political power too. Maybe that's all it has ever been about. I don't know what that means exactly but it's an interesting observation.
One suspects that this is a very self-aware move on Paul Thomas Anderson's behalf. Pat is the story's protagonist. His perspective is the one the audience is aligned with. While you never can say for certain, one assumes that Anderson put a bit of himself into this guy. He's an old white guy too. That the film's hero is repeatedly mocked and humiliated for his own out-of-touch qualities shows that the director has no illusions about this behavior being admirable. Similarly, the younger characters in “One Battle After Another” have an energy and spirit beyond their elders. They are always racing around on skateboards, always energized to speak truth to power and to stand up for what is right. As the title indicates, and the ending further proves, the fight goes on. It never ends. Their parents fucked it up, they couldn't fix things, but maybe the kids will be alright. As bad as things are, maybe there's hope for the future after all.
Ultimately though, it is intriguing that Pat is both the film's hero and a figure of mockery. Leonardo DiCaprio, once again, happily embraces a schlubby, dad-like image here that defies his years as a sex symbol. He spends almost the entire film in a bathrobe, with scraggly facial hair. He's perpetually stoned out of his mind and frequently frustrated with everything happening around him. It's really funny, DiCaprio having no problem playing the clown. He tumbles, falls, gets tossed around, and seems constantly annoyed by the serious questions being asked of him. “One Battle After Another” is not like “Inherent Vice,” where almost everyone in the story are stoned out of their gourds the whole time. Pat is the fool in a cast full of straight men, Benicio del Toro and Sean Penn act like distinctively in-control and cool minded individuals in comparison to Leo's stumbling around. It's an amusing set-up for a film, a guy forced back into action after spending thirty years smoking and drinking his brains away.
It's not an unexpected tone from the director of “There Will Be Blood” or “Boogie Nights.” At the same time, you can almost see why – beyond the award season glamour – a profits-obsessed CEO would sign off on this movie. Is “One Battle After Another,” in fact, Anderson's go at making a proper action movie? From the inciting incident on, the film is in almost constant movement. DiCaprio spends most of the run time in literal pursuit of his daughter, often from the seat of a car. The last third features multiple shoot-outs, an explosion, an acrobatic car crash. The camera is often attached to the front of a moving vehicle as it spends along desert highways. In other words, there's a lot of what you'd call “action” in this movie and it's all very well executed. I don't think this is the director auditioning for a “Mission: Impossible” movie or anything but it's definitely somewhat, kind of abreast with that type of film making.
As you'd probably expect from a Paul Thomas Anderson production, “One Battle After Another” is simply an excellent looking film. Michael Bauman is back as cinematographer, after gifting “Licorice Pizza” with its textured, deep look. He creates something similarly rich here. Individual shots stick in the mind. Kids on skateboards leaping across roof tops in the golden moonlight, fog behind them. A nun with a gun firing away in the dark. An erection bulging at the forefront of the frame. The editing, from Andy Jurgensen, is similarly precise. A shot of Willa sitting at a table, moments before a heavily armed squad marches into the room, is so perfectly constructed. The comedic timing and anxious mood are both created by cuts that are ideally arranged.
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