REVIEW:
One Battle After Another
it’s, of course, Paul Thomas Anderson who writes the ultimate Gen X letter of penance. he’s the platonic ideal of that child of MTV, initially making grand gestures towards the hopelessness of the post-Reagan world, then slowly growing into his real soft shell, hopelessly in love with the world around him, with all its dips and valleys. the boy who wrote Magnolia came back around to write Licorice Pizza, about a boy and a girl in the Valley with problems that aren’t rapturously life-ending, but will leave them with little pocks like puberty and young adulthood tend to do.
so when it comes time to pop that kernel about a young Black revolutionary he’s held onto for decades, he finally lets in the populism he’s happily allowed for himself into his work. he starts with that Pynchon-esque smirk and gives in to a grin, telling stories about small revolutions in little towns despite the towering, fascist fences that loom all around them. a group of white supremacists calling themselves the Christmas Adventurers have a lot of little meetings about their genetic duty but end up mostly trying to keep unqualified whites out. more importantly, back in the day here, organized groups in the tradition of the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers, and the Irish Republican Army directly freed new American hostages while flaunting racial and economic freedom, and in that present day, organized communities of slackers, skaters, and sinners have rigorous systems to protect their neighbors without breaking a sweat. the post-COVID darlings of contemporary satire like Succession and Eddington angle for your grimace, observant but eager for you to acknowledge it. Pynchon-Anderson seek for a smile instead, someone content with the burden of knowledge and seeking whatever inspiration regardless, reveling equally in the idea of the French 75 living on and a late-age incel-turned-Klan wannabe who has a sexual awakening thanks to a revolutionary well after his hair’s grayed out. and maybe even a perfectly-executed car chase modeled after a rollercoaster ride.
there’s all these signals of the culture war sprinkled in throughout to stake characters’ allegiances and lack of them while the film moves at its brisk pace, but the real stakes of this world are presented with, at the very least, sincerity, and at the most with grand emphasis. Ghetto Pat (Leonardo DiCaprio) really cares about the people fenced off as prisoners of the culture war in obscene ICE prisons, so he fights as part of the French 75 to free them, albeit with the role of creating spectacle. later, deep into a revolution that doesn’t stop out of necessity or convenience, he decides to prioritize bringing a new life into this world safely and puts a pause on his own life to ensure his baby grows up to see some potential of a better world, one where she can be part of making it better. 16 years later, Pat (now Bob) comes to Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro) for his help in rescuing his missing daughter. St. Carlos, picking up on what Bob is putting out, tells him about his own place in the revolution, quick to describe his immigrant protection operation as “all legit, from the heart. no cash.” (sounds like something a young Paul Thomas Anderson might’ve told Charlie Rose back in the day.) a business owner at heart, he wants to protect not only his people but anyone he perceives to be fighting for a better life. he knows the common man to be deserving of a life of security and respect. as such, “no cash.” the whole stretch of Baktan Cross in act two is this ode to why we all fight to see the dawn with one dusk after another. Bob tells Sergio, “Life. LIFE!”
the thing about populism is that it’s mostly built on good ideas that many agree on, but not on results with tangible effects on our lives. most Americans agree that it’s hard to get by right now, that a gestapo police force kidnapping and imprisoning brown people based on nothing but perception is evil; they also mostly agree on a general outlook of optimism, despite any evidence laid bare in front of them. a blockbuster movie like this presents lessons and passion, but those loose threads that Anderson always leaves for you to reconnect with later in life and with another watch are comparatively lacking in this one.
wonderful to watch in full 1.43:1 all the way on IMAX 70mm. there’s not as much back-to-back visual flaunting as usual, but some of those VistaVision shots shine, especially in night sequences and almost whenever Sean Penn is on screen. the second act, breathlessly moving through the town of Baktan Cross, is the most thrilling. Teyana Taylor is electric, just as she was in A Thousand and One, and she gives one of the best supporting performances in recent memory; on the biggest screen imaginable, as Perfidia sneaks out of the house to “go do the revolution,” you can see about eight different thoughts flash across her face in mere seconds before she slips out the door. Regina Hall turns in such a foundational performance. Penn is, of course, pitch-perfect and made for the role, perhaps the funniest he’ll ever be. Chase Infiniti does an incredible physical performance throughout that makes her an instant star for the big screen, like Pom Klementieff in the last two Mission: Impossibles. relatedly, the final car chase is technically commendable (and still rose my heart rate during the second watch), but the paternity test device is something straight out of M:I. i expected Infiniti to do the Tom Cruise head twist.