“One Battle After Another” is the newest Paul Thomas Anderson movie. Anderson is an acclaimed director, most well known for his film “There Will Be Blood”. “One Battle After Another” is already his most financially successful film to date.
“One Battle After Another” is a somewhat difficult movie to decipher, causing viewers to come away with different readings on what the movie was trying to accomplish. This can be attributed to the movie pulling a bait and switch on the audience after the set up. The movie is set up in a way that leads the audience to think that it will be about the government versus a group of political revolutionaries, but as the setup concludes, there a the time jump to the future/present day (it’s unclear whether the opening is present day or if the rest of the movie is) and the conflict is revealed to be simply between one military general and his illegitimate daughter. In this respect, the movie feels somewhat similar to “Burn After Reading”, where the conflict is set against enormous government conspiracy, but is just a petty conflict between a couple of people. The two movies are also similar in that the characters are not particularly smart, but in ways that are funny and well-written. For example, in “One Battle After Another”, Leonardo DiCaprio and Benicio Del Toro’s characters, believing they are being hunted down by the government, get pulled over for visibly drinking and driving. This Coen brother’s-type style of small stakes conflict driven by somewhat mindless characters is truly spectacular when done right. This movie excels in that regard. Specifically, the villain’s motivation in this movie is spectacularly stupid and small-minded.
The villain, portrayed by Sean Penn, has the goal of keeping his membership into a white supremacist group, by killing his mixed-race daughter. The darkly comedic piece of this is that the white supremacist group he joins is not some shadowy cabal, it’s a bunch of nobodies with no political sway or power at all, essentially just a social club. So not only is his motivation stupid and small-minded in its prejudice, but his ultimate goal of staying in the group is even more pathetic, since all he receives in return for his membership is… a small office room in the middle floor of a skyscraper.
A problem with this movie that should be addressed is that audiences have taken political interpretations from it that are not founded in the actual movie, but preconceived notions of what the politics of the movie will be. Mainly, people on both the left and right have praised and criticized the movie respectively, over what they perceive to be a left-wing message about political activism, immigration, and an evil far-right government, among other things. However, this is not true at all. The political revolutionaries in the film, as I explained earlier, are not part of the emotional story (or message) of the film, only serving as plot devices to help and hinder the protagonists on their journey. The film does not portray the political revolutionaries in a positive light either, as they are shown to be crass and needlessly violent. This is not to say that they are evil, but they aren’t the good guys either. They simply serve as movers of the plot. The government is also not portrayed as evil in this film, as some would suggest, since the antagonism comes from one man using a government force under false pretenses, not a government force itself. People who view this movie (positively or negatively) as being about the government going after political revolutionaries are not looking at the movie objectively, but rather, drawing a conclusion that fits their pre-conceived notion of the film.
Ultimately, this movie is a spectacular piece of cinema, with some breathtaking cinematography (especially in the final sequence on the road), excellent humor, a good story with compelling drama, and a slate of great performances to boot. It hearkens back to some of the great Coen brothers’ movies, but with its own hopeful spin. Sadly, this movie’s true message and story have been buried in a landslide of poorly thought out political rhetoric. However, if the viewer can break free from the partisan mindset, a truly excellent movie awaits.
One Battle After Another.
