Warning: this article contains minor spoilers
Preceding the theatrical release of Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, reviewers and audiences alike were immediately claiming that it was the director’s best work. As a PTA fan, I jumped at the chance to see his follow-up to 2021’s Licorice Pizza on the big screen. However, after nearly three hours, I left the theater with mixed thoughts on the film that is already being lauded as a “modern masterpiece.”
Inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, One Battle centers on Bob Furguson (Leonardo DiCaprio), an ex-revolutionary who embarks on a journey to rescue his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) from Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn) -– a corrupt military officer who is attempting to gain membership to a white supremacist organization.
Despite my preoccupations about the various thematic failings of this film, I must say that, technically speaking, One Battle is quite the achievement. Primarily shot in VistaVision, which not only expands the size of the regular 35mm frame but provides sharper quality and higher resolution. VistaVision has largely fallen out of fashion since the 1950s due to its high cost and impracticality, but Anderson’s revival of the format for this film produced excellent results.
Although the digital color grading gave the film a bluish tint that I did not care for, the aspect ratio and quality of the pictures granted it an immersive quality that singlehandedly made the ticket price worth it.
Visuals aside, DiCaprio, Penn, and newcomer Chase Infiniti all give fine performances. DiCaprio nails it as the bumbling, yet empathetic mess that is Bob Furguson. Penn gives perhaps the strangest, yet most entertaining performance of his career as Lockjaw. And while I felt that Willa was a rather undeveloped character, Infiniti really comes into her own in the last segment of the film.
Obviously, One Battle deals with several heavy subject matters that are more relevant than ever: political violence, U.S. militarism, systematic racism, generational divides, fascism, and self-serving radicalism. But, in my view, this film does very little but touch upon these themes over the course of its two hour and fifty minute long runtime. It is no coincidence that One Battle was released during a time of major political dissidence to say the least, but it seems that PTA was more interested in shock humor and flashy action sequences instead of providing the necessary depth to this story.
One Battle is imbued with the same frenetic energy that can be found in Anderson’s earlier work –– namely Boogie Nights (1997) and Magnolia (1999). While the pacing certainly added intensity to the many action sequences, it does the screenplay no favors as there are very few scenes in which Anderson slows down to truly develop the characters and the narrative as a whole. We only see a glimpse of the relationship between Ferguson and his daughter before she is captured. Willa is effectively sidelined until the final act and yet we are somehow expected to connect with the events that are unfolding. And the ending ultimately felt unearned because it alludes to Willa carrying on the family’s revolutionary legacy, but she does not play a significant enough role throughout the film for this moment to feel thematically satisfying.
Moreover, I felt that the film’s emphasis on humor took away from whatever message Anderson was trying to get across. The first act of the film is especially rife with comedy bits that struck me as more immature than charming. The (literally) underground white supremacist organization that Lockjaw is trying to join is also called the Christmas Adventurers Club. Lockjaw and his racist cohorts are all poked fun at, but the satirical, almost fantastical tone that the film takes on at times feels misaligned with the very real subject matters it is presenting.
Ironically, One Battle contains criticisms directed at the self-serving activism of the French 75 and yet it stars Leonardo DiCaprio who has long been criticized for being a “performative activist.” Additionally, this film reportedly cost well over 100 million dollars to make; or, in other words, it was produced by people who are completely out of touch with what average Americans will see and personally experience in Trump’s America. Overall, One Battle After Another felt more like an aestheticization of the current political moment –– of the violence and outright bigotry we see on display every single day –– rather than a work that actually says anything meaningful.
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