Paul Thomas Anderson has made an absolute masterpiece about rebellion, standing up to power, and hope.
I went into One Battle After Another cold, which is an experience I highly recommend. Even seeing the trailer doesn't truly prepare you for this 2-hour and 42-minute magnum opus. It revolves around a modern-day revolutionary sect called the French 75 as they carry out immigration liberation and general anti-capitalist insurgency tactics. Ghetto Pat (Leo DiCaprio) and Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) are active leaders in their movement. I don't want to get into a detailed plot summary because a lot happens, but I do want to talk about three things that One Battle After Another does really, really well – and what I can't stop thinking about.
It powerfully depicts the de-centering of white men in leftist organizations
From the trailer, you'd think Leo DiCaprio would be the brains behind everything in the radical French 75. That couldn't be further from the truth, as he's essentially a bumbling, stoned Big Lebowski-type dude, although he is well-meaning. When compared to his partner and lover, Perfidia, he's all soft and scared, a forever second fiddle to her powerful presence, mastermind planning, and pure passion for the cause. Seeing a woman of color in charge of a paramilitary organization doesn't happen very often, and it's extremely moving. It's very much a "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" viewpoint. Of course, the movie is directed by a white man and features white male main characters, but they're not the emotional or competent core of the film. Those roles belong to Perfidia, Willa, and Deandra.
16 years after he's gone underground into hiding with his daughter, Willa, Bob's forgotten nearly everything he trained for, including much-needed passwords in the case everything goes to hell. There's a brilliant scene in which he spends 10 minutes arguing on the phone with another agent about a codeword, while behind him, the Sensei (Benicio Del Toro) is silently and quickly organizing migrants into a safe shelter to avoid a raid. It's a powerful moment that contrasts chest-beating bravado with the actual everyday work of committing to a cause. In today's political climate, Paul Thomas Anderson is sounding the alarm on performative activism, and it's invigorating to see.
It forcefully shows the banality — and stupidity — of evil
The central conflict in the film revolves around Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn) and his quest to join the Christmas Adventurers, a white supremacist secret society. However, Lockjaw and Perfidia have a child together, Willa. If it were to come out that he has a mixed-race child, his acceptance into the CA would be in jeopardy.
First, we have to talk about Sean Penn in this movie. His performance is absolutely stellar as a pent-up, military-chafing, chauvinistic pig. He's going to win an Oscar for his performance in this, as he's almost unrecognizable. The way he casually throws around racial epithets in his quest to arrest undocumented immigrants is stomach-churning and absolutely classic villain coding. When he meets up with the secret society of white supremacists, they're bumbling buffoons who are obsessed with racial purity, and he desperately craves acceptance into their secret club. These people, of course, are horrible humans, but the way PTA portrays them is to cast a spotlight on their absolute absurdity, down to greeting each other with "Hail St. Nick." Despite all their power and evil machinations, they're deeply uncool, incompetent, and can't even live up to their own self-made, racist expectations (as in the case of Lockjaw).
It brings back a classic cloak-and-dagger feel to film
I love old movies about the secret tactics of the French resistance like Army of Shadows, and One Battle After Another brings that same energy and feel to the modern era. From the complicated cell structure of insurgents to actual secret tunnels under houses and between buildings, the day-to-day work of secret organizations is painted with a masterly brush. I suppose I never really thought about modern organizations doing such cloak-and-dagger stuff, but it makes sense and also really brings it to life.
Bob (Leo DiCaprio) and his daughter Willa go into hiding for 16 years, but he never forgets (most of) what they're running from. They, too, have secret tunnels, MacGuffin-type transmitters that glow green when someone trusted is nearby, and rendezvous points for when shit goes down. Bob instills all of this into his teenage daughter, who sort of believes him but also thinks he's just a paranoid, stoner old crank. When the time comes and she's faced with a do-or-die type situation, she calmly accepts the protocol and trusts the other person with her life. It reminds me of Sarah Connor training John Connor all of his life for the day SkyNet goes operational.
My favorite tiny but poignant moment is when the Sensei is closing up the hatch of a secret tunnel. It's a brief scene, but when he pulls the hatch down on top of him on the floor, a small rug effortlessly and magically unrolls down on it, completely covering their tracks. I don't know why this little flourish is so amazing, but it really captures how detail-oriented a resistance must be if they're to succeed. And in turn, how Anderson really mastered the feel of it via film.
Overall, this movie is incredibly moving, at times laugh-out-loud funny, and occasionally scary in how prescient it is to our current political climate. The run time is definitely long as it inches toward 3 hours, but I didn't even get up to go to the bathroom once. That's how much it enthralls you. I look forward to seeing it again to relive some of the blink-or-you-miss-them, adrenaline-fueled scenes and car chase sequences.
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The Math
Nerd Rating: 9/10
Highlights: How much Bob and the Sensei drunk-drive with Modelos; Perfidia's one immaculate eyelash, and Lockjaw's mouth gymnastics in any given scene.
POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.
