By Dolores Quintana
One Battle After Another is modern retro with the heat, 70s-style car chases, with vital emotional heft and characterization. Layers upon layers of references with the sexual charge that comes from danger and rebellion, and then it evolves.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s newest has all of the stellar filmmaking and style that the director is celebrated for, but I would say that with this film, he has made his blockbuster movie. It’s an intelligent and literate blockbuster, but it has all of the excitement and thrills that you would expect in a summer action film.
We’re talking about Friedkin and Yates’ style car chases with desperate revolutionaries fleeing the law. Get that popcorn out because it is the excitement and thrills that cinema fans adore.
Sparks fly from the screen every time Teyana Taylor, as Perfidia Beverly Hills, graces it with her presence, but the film is filled with great performances. One Battle After Another has a powerful eroticism and a rampaging commitment to its story that flies off the screen from the first seconds of the film. As a bonus, it’s also hilarious. It’s not what we expected from Paul Thomas Anderson, but it’s what we needed from PTA.
The film was written and directed by Anderson and is “inspired” by the Thomas Pynchon novel, “Vineland.”, a book that the director has wanted to adapt for some time.
Rebels have always been passionate and, thus, very sexy, and this is something that Anderson and the film put forth from the get-go. There’s a reason why rebellion and protest are usually the territory of the young, but the film dares to go beyond that space into what happens when the rebels not only have a cause, but a baby.
Here’s the synopsis: When an enemy resurfaces after 16 years, a group of ex-revolutionaries reunite to rescue the daughter of one of their own. Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, and Chase Infiniti star in the film, with appearances by Alana Haim and Paul Grimstad.
Anderson has evenly crafted a story that is about the confused but dedicated rebels and their opposites in the microcosm, but how all of our lives intersect with the macrocosm of white supremacy in the United States. It shows the circular nature of the struggle, which is generational. It shows how entrenched the ideals of xenophobia and racism really are and how they are real to the people who believe in them. It is presented in a satirical manner, but it is clear how such things could and do exist.
It shows that this hurts all of us, including the people it is supposedly meant to protect, because even they are considered expendable when necessary. It is not really protecting those who are its most fervent soldiers, but protecting the status quo that benefits only a chosen few, and what power you have can be taken from you at any point.
Teyana Taylor gives an incandescent star-making performance, which should be generating Academy Award nomination talk immediately. Just watching her fire that machine gun while pregnant is worth the price of admission alone, but watching her use all of her intelligence and bravado against the system is equally impressive.
Leonardo de Caprio adds a vulnerable and strong portrait to his gallery with Bob Ferguson. Bob is the guy who can’t stop smoking reefer to try to deal with everyday life, but will do literally anything to save his child. It’s the most sympathetic performance of De Caprio’s recent career and builds upon his brilliant and brave work in Killers of the Flower Moon.
Sean Penn is doing something that I haven’t seen him do before with his portrayal of Captain Steven Lockjaw. He is obsessed with the pursuit of power and his other desires, but within the closed-off personality is an almost goofy sense of neediness, which deepens the arc of the character. You expect the silent agent of evil, but you look into his face and see a golden retriever.
Chase Infiniti does excellent work as Willa Ferguson, a young woman who is still trying to figure out who she is, but has the fire of her parents burning within her. Benicio del Toro has an incredible turn as the charming and ever-so nonchalant white hat coyote and Latino leader, Sergio St. Carlos. Hey, maybe he should be in charge, no? While the plans of others break apart, he effortlessly sails through and saves the day multiple times. Regina Hall brings a wonderfully deep and calm presence to her work as Deandra. She is every bit as powerful, but her Deandra turns inward.
With One Battle After Another, you will not only be entertained, you will also be enlightened. The plotting isn’t as dense as some of Anderson’s other films, and the comedy rises to the top, but this is the work of a brilliant director at the top of his form.
One Battle After Another runs free with passion and youthful enthusiasm for change. It’s far from didactic polemic as it is shot through with hope for understanding, including those who seek the approval of the system and those who inadvertently benefit from it. It is Anderson’s most accessible and empathetic film, which shoots for the stars with an earnestness that seemed to start to break free with his previous film, Licorice Pizza.
I do have to mention that the film looks great, and the cinematography of Michael Bauman is splendid. I actually marveled at one of the shots in the film while watching it, because Bauman has imbued ordinary objects with an intense beauty that doesn’t pull you out of the film, but reminds you of the wonder of the physical world.
One Battle After Another is now my favorite Paul Thomas Anderson film, as it reconciles the director’s talent fully with his knowledge of history, his daring sense of humor, and his passion for humanity and justice, with his empathy for the broken and the lost.
