RIOTUS

One Battle After Another is coated with urgency from the very start. Paul Thomas Anderson’s tenth feature film wastes no time diving into the capital-I importance of its plot as Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor, playing another perfectly named PTA protagonist) surveys a migrant detention camp like a hawk. It’s one of many marks Perfidia and her revolutionary organization, the French 75, will target throughout the film’s explosive opening act. Liberating those unlawfully held is the latest in the 75’s string of acts, but for Ghetto Pat (Leonardo DiCaprio), it’s his first foray into the fray. The fireworks he deploys at the end of the raid are only the first of the evening, as he and Perfidia strike up a relationship. 

But Pat isn’t the only one Perfidia saw that evening. Chasing a high of her own in the midst of the job, she comes across the camp’s white supremacist leader, Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), subjecting him to a phsyosexual game before eventually cutting him loose. That decision ultimately becomes the downfall of Perfidia and the French 75, as Lockjaw begins a hunt that rivals Coyote and Roadrunner to find and capture her. Once he does, she sells out her crew in short order, forcing everyone, including Regina Hall’s commanding Deandra, to go on the run. Turning herself in makes things especially tough on Pat, as he abruptly becomes a single father to their newborn child. 

So when One Battle After Another picks up sixteen or so years later, it’s no surprise that Pat, now in hiding as “Bob Ferguson,” is a shell of the revolutionary that once robbed banks and blew up senators’ offices. Threadbare and worn out, he’s fried his brain as a “drug and alcohol lover.” The now-grown-up Willa (Chase Infiniti, making her stellar film debut), like all rebellious teenagers, is trying to pull away from the structure of paranoia that Bob has created to ensure they stay safe. So when Lockjaw descends upon their home of Baktan Cross to find the pair, all hell breaks loose with Willa out in the wind and Bob on a mission to her before Lockjaw does.

Like a lot of modern auteurs who lament the invention of the smartphone, Anderson’s output over the last two decades has largely avoided modern times, but sets that straight with One Battle, which arrives with an eerie sense of timing. Much of the political overtones are going to feel as if they’ve been directly ripped from the headlines. While Anderson has plenty to say about our current moment, the film uses this as a case to dig into the concerns all parents face—albeit ratcheted up for extreme effect. How do you stay true to fighting the good fight when being a parent is a consistently terrifying experience? If the common refrain amongst lovers of Phantom Thread is that it’s Anderson’s treatise on marriage, then One Battle is absolutely about what it means to be a parent, especially in our crumbling modern day. It’s fitting that Anderson mentioned he’s worked on this script, loosely adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, since the birth of his daughter twenty years ago; the excitement and fear about being a parent is infused throughout every beat of the movie. 

But this is a Paul Thomas Anderson joint, which means this gripping narrative features some of the most breathtakingly exciting filmmaking around. The summarized events above are roughly the first third of a nearly three-hour movie that never once feels as if it’s lagging. In fact, One Battle is relentlessly paced with one incredible sequence, well, after another. If mid-movie setpiece set against the background of peaceful protestors and a force of trigger-happy riot cops isn’t enough for you, then how about a breathtaking car chase set alongside the rolling highways of Southern California’s Highway 78 coated with shades of Terminator 2 and the original Mad Max? Anderson and cinematographer Michael Bauman capture these moments with a sense of spectacle and awe. Don’t worry if you’re not in one of the handful of places in the US that’s screening the film in VistaVision; each frame is utterly stunning, no matter the format. 

The whole movie moves with lightning-fast precision, where even quiet moments have something spectacular in the frame. To wit, a sequence with Bob and the Baktan Cross revolutionary Sergio St. Carlos (a stellar Benicio del Toro who is as calm and collected as Bob is frantic) features moments akin to my favorite Steven Soderbergh’s trick in The Knick: any time the exposition got too much, the camera would roam around the stunning sets. Anderson deploys a similar tactic here, showcasing more of the surroundings during transitional story beats to give those moments plenty of life.

The movie rests on the shoulders of DiCaprio, Infiniti, and Penn, the latter of whom has a much higher battling average than I anticipated. Penn infuses Lockjaw with a laser-sharp focus and a little waddle that lands as if he’s got a perpetual stick up his butt, causing him to lean more than the Tower of Pisa. Comedic as it may seem, and Lockjaw gets plenty of laughs at his expense, there’s never any doubt he’s a force of nature as elemental as time itself. 

DiCaprio is, predictably, fantastic. His portrayal of Bob initially comes across as a (somehow) more pathetic version of Rick Dalton. As the movie continues, Bob manages to find the spirit that made Perfidia fall in love with him all those years ago. The way in which DiCaprio manages to mine that established persona, yet infuse it with new shades and hues, instantly places Bob into Anderson’s character hall of fame. 

Moreover, Bob also serves as a reflection of Anderson’s status in the film industry. Once upon a time, he was a rebellious director, causing all kinds of ruckus as he fought studios for his vision and saw the accolades pile up accordingly. Now he’s in his mid-50s, married, with kids, and willingly talking about how much he liked Venom: Let There Be Carnage. I won’t go so far as to say that Anderson, or Bob for that matter, is washed. But Bob’s arc in the film is him coming to terms with letting his child grow up to be her own woman in finding the hope in the next generation, even as the world is seemingly falling all around us—all while examining and poking a little fun at the way parents eventually become increasingly risk-adverse as they age.

As Willa, Infiniti makes an immediate and electric statement. More than capable of squaring off against both DiCaprio and Penn, she’s the film’s beating heart and a walking thesis of the hope Bob eventually realizes he has all along. The world is dark and awful, but having a child is a chance, an opportunity to break the cycle and become better than what you currently are. 

Turning a movie like One Battle After Another into such an overt statement of hope is a special magic trick. Doubly so in the wake of what comes before the triumphant film reaches this eventual conclusion. It’d be reductive to parse something as expansive as this film down to one thing or another, yet, by the time it reaches its well-earned ending, it’s fitting all the same: Finding hope in the midst of endless darkness is victory enough.