Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Writer: Paul Thomas Anderson
Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti
Synopsis: Bob is a washed-up revolutionary who lives in a state of stoned paranoia, surviving off-grid with his spirited and self-reliant daughter, Willa. When his evil nemesis resurfaces and Willa goes missing, the former radical scrambles to find her as both father and daughter battle the consequences of their pasts.
Back in August, Leonardo DiCaprio gave an exceptionally long interview to Esquire… sort of. The cover story’s “writer” and photographer, insofar as conducting a free-flowing conversation in which questions play a prominent role makes someone the author of a magazine feature, was Paul Thomas Anderson, DiCaprio’s director in the then-upcoming collaboration between two of Hollywood’s foremost giants. Teasing their first-ever pairing, Anderson’s One Battle After Another, cinema’s greatest living auteur and his star spoke about regrets, aging, the role of cell phones in movies, how making a “political” film can be a bit like eating your vegetables, and more, but it’s the topic of destiny that circles the entire exchange more than any others. “No one can outrun what’s inevitable,” Anderson says. He’s talking about Bob Ferguson/“Ghetto Pat,” DiCaprio’s character in the film, but one could read it as though he’s talking about himself.
Anderson further describes DiCaprio’s character as “someone who starts out wanting to change the world on the far left but gets increasingly cranky and closed off as he gets older.” And while the specifics of that broad outline relate strictly to One Battle After Another’s principal figure and the attitude that fates him, swap “in cinema” for “on the far left” and you’re getting somewhere re: PTA. Perhaps it was always inevitable for the once-plucky upstart who made Boogie Nights and Magnolia before turning 30 – and has since seen his filmography go almost entirely unrecognized by awards bodies in terms of actually winning anything – to become a public figure who, like his Esquire discussion partner, “rarely give[s] interview[s].” When he does, it’s probably for good reason. When he does, it’s probably going to be about the script that has been sitting on his desk (and its many narrative strands, those of which have been percolating in his mind) for the better part of two decades. “In a way, none of them ever went out of style, because whatever seems to be happening politically seems to always be the same,” he told DiCaprio. “Same shit, different year.”
If that nugget of truth lands with a serious wallop in spite of its own self-evidence, then the punch packed by the film it applies to is more bruising and ferocious than any the writer-director has thrown before. With One Battle After Another, Anderson seems to have distilled decades of pent-up rage regarding societal decay; poignant ideas about the collective necessity to revolt and how oppositional forces aim to stunt a resistance’s growth by any means necessary; and the long-gestating blueprint for his ideal action blockbuster into a wise, exhilarating, and frequently hysterical epic that meets the moment head-on with one bash to the skull after another. Bracing and concussive, it’s a film that would be the defining work of most filmmakers’ careers, a notion that only warrants debate given how many masterpieces Anderson had made before this one – eight out of his nine features, for those keeping track at home. Wholly irrefutable is its relevance, a quality that only enhances its narrative brilliance and makes its depiction of a nightmare feel far more dreamlike as it is consumed.
Maybe that’s the VistaVision talking, or the percussive nature of Jonny Greenwood’s piano-dominant, career-best score, which retools the composer’s jittery tendencies in favor of controlled chaos. Or perhaps it’s the fact that its author, whose most “divisive” projects (Inherent Vice, Licorice Pizza) still tend to be far superior to any of the other movies released in their respective calendar years thanks to Anderson’s unique knack for making the most absurd subsets of humanity seem somewhat normal, has chosen to view this tale of renegades and revolutionaries through that same lens. One Battle After Another begins with the ever-exceptional DiCaprio’s “Ghetto Pat,” the first of the two names he goes by in the film, joining the intoxicating Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) and a smattering of other recognizable anarchists – Regina Hall, Wood Harris, and Alana Haim among them – in their efforts to free a horde of imprisoned migrants from a detention center near the California-Mexico border.
“Make a show. Impress me,” Perfidia tells “Pat,” seemingly the squad’s explosives nut, not so much an expert but a fanatic with a set of reliable skills. Swarming the compound involves disarming and entrapping those guarding it, including Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (a twitchy, brilliant turn from Sean Penn), a task Perfidia claims with seductive glee, zip tying his wrists and sending him head over heels in love with her verve, white supremacist ideologies be damned. It’s on Pat to set off the fireworks that announce the so-called French 75 vigilante group’s “mothafuckin’ revolution,” and once his pyrotechnic handiwork reaches the midnight sky, One Battle After Another takes off with it.
In short order, we watch as Pat and Perfidia fall for one another, welcome a baby girl, and drift apart as the new mother grows jealous of her partner’s unflappable affection for their daughter, something that was once reserved for Perfidia and Perfidia alone. Sixteen years down the line, with his gal not-so-suddenly in the wind and his daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti, deserving of the “revelatory” distinctions she’s sure to be showered with in the days and weeks to come) resenting him as he drinks and smokes his way into a perpetual fog, the man now known as Bob Ferguson – after a necessary change of residence and name for anonymity, in case the law went searching for clues to Perfidia’s whereabouts – is faced with a new challenge: Rescuing/reuniting with his daughter, who is taken to safety after news of Lockjaw’s resurfacing reaches the still-active French 75ers, the few of whom made it out from under his thumb back when their erstwhile leader first disappeared. To make matters more complex, he’s a lost and lonely soul who’s not quite searching for purpose, but a better way to pass the time. (He watches and quotes The Battle of Algiers at one point, which is a start.)
That’s quite a bit to gnaw on for a small bite out of this 162-minute picture, and had Anderson chosen to formally adapt Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland” – a distinct and intricate tome that ran fewer than 400 pages but packed in enough plot to fill a book triple the size – for his 10th film, there would be even more to digest. For one, audiences would have to get used to Leonardo DiCaprio playing a dude named Zoyd Wheeler (which would’ve been a hoot, honestly); moreover, they would have been subjected to what in all likelihood would have still been a relentlessly entertaining film, but a denser, more rambly one, too, the sort that Warner Bros. would have struggled to market even more than they did with One Battle After Another in its present, perfectly-commercial state. Instead, Anderson permissibly lifted the bits he most urgently required from Pynchon’s brilliant prose and weaved his own modern tale of rebellion from the yarn it provided. If there is a world in which Thomas Pynchon frequents his local multiplex, one can only hope that he makes it out to see the stroke of genius that his fourth novel inspired, a prescient depiction of ultramodern sociopolitical duress as confronted by those who truly believe in freedom and justice for all.
Like any review and/or summary of “Vineland,” there are certain details that this account of One Battle After Another wouldn’t dare to divulge, such as the name of the elite underground (and strictly “racially pure”) society that Penn’s Lockjaw, an insecure prick who would rather see a white world burn than a rainbowed one flourish, hopes to smarm his way into; or the answer to the coded question, “What time is it?” that Bob can’t seem to answer, as teased in the film’s teasers; or how Sensei Sergio (a hilarious Benicio del Toro) plays into it all apart from his urging that Bob jumps out of a moving car with reckless abandon, “just like Tom fucking Cruise.” Even saying this much about the performances within feels like a betrayal that would send one far outside of the French 75’s good graces, not necessarily into a world of hurt, but into one loaded with tripwires and lined with as many explosives as a trio of 70mm film canisters can carry. If one word of advice is permitted, it would be to see One Battle After Another in as large and loud an environment as possible, not only because it’s the way the filmmakers intended for it to be seen, but because it’s bound to loom in that capacity long after its note-perfect conclusion rolls around.
That “large and loud” distinction is often limited to “blockbusters,” a label that cinephiles (and Anderson himself) have never once prescribed to his films, and rightfully so. Yet to call him an “art-house director,” as DiCaprio noted the filmmaker is often considered midway through their Esquire chat, feels like calling the Russo Brothers “indie darlings.” Except that, in the case of PTA, the cinematic language he speaks is one of his own creation, the sort that vibrates like the purr emanating off of a satisfying drumroll and can be acquired by no one else. There’s no Duolingo for this parlance, just an understanding or a lack thereof, and an acceptance that its timelessness is a functioning pillar of its excellence. Speaking to DiCaprio, Anderson noted that he’s desperate “to hold on to any shred of the Olden Times that’s left,” a deliberate act of denial and a search for nostalgia. Thankfully, he also acknowledged the irony woven into his own philosophy: “The best part of life is the constant forward momentum. It only moves in one direction, so hop on and hold tight.” In other words, it’s a hilly ride not unlike One Battle After Another, though its valleys function as peaks regardless of the sudden change in altitude. One might compare such an experience to that of riding a rollercoaster. In this case, the word “masterpiece” works just as well.
One Battle After Another opens in theaters on Sept. 26.
