From anarchists and immigration raids to witness protection and karate to goofy secret societies, “One Battle After Another” is a tautly orchestrated carnival of a movie.
Director Paul Thomas Anderson’s 10th feature film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn and Chase Infiniti in an Oscar-worthy debut is a roller-coaster of genre-blending insanity that’s really like three films in one. Imagine “The Big Lebowski” meets “Taken” meets “V for Vendetta.”
First off, it’s the second Thomas Pynchon adaptation Anderson’s done, and the fact that the reclusive, selective author of literary masterpieces like “V” and “Gravity’s Rainbow” has even given permission is a testament to Anderson’s impressive oeuvre and place in cinematic history. Secondly, Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood once again contributes a tense and haunting instrumental score that’s worth hearing in surround sound in a theater, as it heightens every dramatic moment. Thirdly, Anderson is one of the last major directors DiCaprio needed to work with in order to complete the legends circuit: Scorsese, Cameron, Nolan, Spielberg, Tarantino, Iñárritu and now the auteur responsible for a diverse array of commercially viable, arthouse films over the last quarter century like “Punch Drunk Love,” “Boogie Nights” and “There Will Be Blood.”
Within the film are embedded multiple themes regarding social dynamics: the determination of the marginalized; loyalty in friendships; challenges facing lovers; the intense bonds of fathers and daughters; the old cinematic and historical concept that a character can’t run from the past; the dangers of self-hate; and the lengths folks will go to in order to get what they feel they must have.
Much like 2014’s “Inherent Vice” – and, again, much like “The Big Lebowski, from which it borrows generously – “One Battle After Another” contrasts the extreme plot happenings with a mellow, bumbling protagonist who lives in a chill, saturated world created by Anderson’s attention to visual detail: technicolor vistas/aspect ratios/color schemes; warm, funky lighting; and relaxed, breezy wardrobes. Together, they combine effectively to establish a whole, groovy world.
The director employs lots of orangish filters, earth-toned clothing and vintage furniture and cars to create a stylized world in which intense chaos seems like … kind of a chill vibe? It seems to attempt to capture the feeling of what it’d be like to lead this big, dangerous living while blissed out on good music and a considerable amount of drugs while on the way to partake in said chaos.
DiCaprio’s Bob Ferguson is a former anarchist arsonist, the explosives guy for the French 75, a group led by his powerful, cold-as-ice lover Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyanna Taylor). This feeds into leftist tropes that abound throughout the film, and as Ferguson is thrust into the single-dad role in the second and third acts, we see a reversal there as he struggles to raise a mixed-race child in an uncaring world.
When the movie begins, Bob is clean-shaven, trim, dressed in black, quick and alert. He quietly moves among the group under Perfidia’s leadership but separates from it to set off detonations as a distraction to successfully free a facility holding migrants. A long series of events culminates in Perfidia getting captured, escaping and leaving Bob with a baby daughter, Willa, whom he raises in a small town under an alias.
As it extends beyond the expository first third, the film is almost Scorsese-ian in its depiction of multiple eras of time and how the core characters keep getting magnetized back toward each other through the years. After the identity of his daughter is exposed and she is kidnapped, we see if Bob – who has transitioned into more of a hapless individual, with much of the film’s humor coming at his expense – can fight to save her.
At first glance, analyzing the tone of the work and author’s purpose, it’s just an exciting action film. But it’s at this point when the tenor begins to shift and deeper questions are raised. The glory of the raid on the migrant compound makes it feel like the movie is going to propagandize anarchist values. But then, as the film goes on, the viewer watches the choices that are made by leftist characters and sees that Pynchon/Anderson seem to indict and challenge those ideals and tactics as much as they romanticize them.
For example, when Perfidia abandons Bob and their baby in the first act, she appears intensely proud and resolute in prioritizing revolution over family, and Pynchon/Anderson seem to question whether that type of thinking is deeply selfish and/or delusional. It slaps even harder because Taylor plays the scene so earnestly, which frames her decision as an awful moral failing more than as a regrettable mistake.
Moreover, years of sedentary pot smoking have made Bob dull, paranoid and easily confused; when he tries to get back in touch with his old anarchist collective for various meetups on the way to rescue Willa, he often cannot remember old passwords, leading to furious cursing jags that leave the audience in stitches and poke light fun at the bureaucracy, inefficiency and pettiness of some leftist organizations.
It’s this narrative layering technique that makes both Pynchon’s books and Anderson’s films accessible to many levels of readers and viewers. Like most entries in their respective canons, “One Battle After Another” is the rare piece of existential art that doubles as enjoyable entertainment.
Bob – SPOILER ALERT – ultimately is able to stumble his way to victory, though, in a manner that feels very reminiscent of both “Inherent Vice” and “The Big Lebowski” in its celebration of serendipitous events always befalling the free spirits of the world.
Infiniti plays Willa with the quiet, focused intensity of a bright young woman with big things in her future regardless of the past from which she sprang. Her poise is notable, and her careful acting choices in depicting how a low-affect/energy introvert might react to stress are realistic and brilliantly rendered.
Her foil, Col. Stephen J. Lockjaw, is played by Penn with alternately ridiculously silly mannerisms and scarily sinister intensity. Benicio del Toro, as an instructor of martial arts, offers excellent comedic relief. At one point, in a nice role reversal and a nod to his chaotic road-buddy character in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” he keeps a hyperventilating Bob calm in the car. Regina Hall, as French 75 loyalist Deandra, is another standout performer.
All in all, “One Battle After Another” does so many things well. It could be loved or hated for many reasons based on how it represents politics, immigration, sex, gender, child-rearing and more. However, it’s probably best viewed as just a really sophisticated action comedy.
luke@blanknews.com
