As a child of the ‘80s, my cinematic awakening occurred during the era of Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, and Oliver Stone. During the “greed decade” (a term Stone essentially coined in Wall Street), those three filmmakers were cooking with gas. Scorsese built upon his breakthrough in the ‘70s with Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, After Hours, and The Last Temptation of Christ. Principal photography for Goodfellas began in 1989.
Lee broke through in 1986 with She’s Gotta Have It, then followed up with School Daze, and his first masterpiece, Do the Right Thing, before the decade closed.
Stone transitioned from writing films for others (Midnight Express, Scarface, Conan the Barbarian) to directing his own screenplays, including Salvador, Platoon, Wall Street, Talk Radio, and Born on the Fourth of July, all before 1990.
All three directors went on to make some of the most significant films of the ‘90s. When Scorsese, Spike, or Stone made a film during those years, it wasn’t just a new movie hitting the theater; for cinephiles like myself, it was an event. When speaking of their films during those years, I never said, “Did you see Casino, Malcolm X, or JFK?” I said, “Did you see the new Scorsese, Spike, or Oliver Stone?” You didn’t have to name the title of their latest film for people to know what you were talking about. People knew which film you were referring to automatically.
Their takes on society, race, religion, and the world could be controversial and even polarizing, but regardless of how anyone felt about any individual movie those three directors made, their movies mattered. They moved the needle cinematically and were often part of the public discourse.
We are fortunate to still have Scorsese and Lee working at a high level. Stone has fallen by the wayside, but collectively all three have made an indelible mark on their industry and, more significantly, American life.
I reference these three directors because Paul Thomas Anderson is a modern equivalent. Since his excellent first film, Hard Eight (1996), and then his extraordinary one-two follow-ups Boogie Nights and Magnolia, Anderson has established himself, like Scorsese, Spike, and Stone, as an event director. When Anderson makes a new film, attention must be paid. Since that opening triptych of films, Anderson has gone on to make Punch-Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood, The Master, Inherent Vice, Phantom Thread, Licorice Pizza, and now One Battle After Another. Besides being Paul Thomas Anderson features, those films have one more thing in common: they all matter.
My post-Boogie Nights relationship with Anderson films is decidedly mixed. I greatly admire Magnolia (although a quarter of a century later, I’m still working out my feelings on the raining frogs), I enjoyed both Punch-Drunk Love and Licorice Pizza as minor key PTA films, and I consider There Will Be Blood and Phantom Thread to be two of the best films ever made. However, Inherent Vice I found maddeningly dense, and I flat-out hated his bloated, overlong, endingless 2012 film, The Master.
Even so, despite my misgivings about Inherent Vice and The Master, I never questioned whether a talented filmmaker created either film, or whether Anderson made anything less than the exact film he wanted to make. For me, Anderson is the Radiohead of directors. I adored their first two albums (Pablo Honey and The Bends), admired OK Computer, but have found them to be hit-and-miss since, while also acknowledging the band’s talent and significance. As Radiohead became more experimental with OK Computer, they moved further and further away from what initially drew me to them: their ability to craft great songs within a classic song structure.
Much the same, I have sometimes struggled with Anderson’s output since Boogie Nights because I’ve often felt that he has almost deliberately avoided making structured, entertaining films. While I greatly respect what Anderson has done since Boogie Nights (even Inherent Vice and The Master), I miss the groove and classic conventions of his first two films. Let me be clear, Anderson doesn’t owe me anything. I don’t think he should change either. At least, not unless he wants to. I just know that his post-Boogie efforts don’t hit me in the same exhilarating way as his 1997 take on the adult film industry. I’m also keenly aware that I am in the minority of my fellow film writers. Every movie Anderson has made has been widely acclaimed by critics.
With that said, it brings me no pleasure to say that I didn’t like One Battle After Another. While I approached the film with an open heart and mind, and found the opening compelling, I was ultimately left cold and frustrated by the picture. Based loosely on the 1990 Thomas Pynchon novel Vineland, One Battle After Another follows Leonardo DiCaprio’s in-hiding left-wing revolutionary turned stoner, Bob Ferguson, as he tries to rescue his daughter from the clutches of a menacing Colonel named Stephen Lockjaw (Sean Penn).
This being a Paul Thomas Anderson film, that nutshell description does not do the film service. One Battle After Another blends drama, comedy, action, and satire to create a thick stew of cinema and social commentary. Anderson is incapable of making a film that is anything less than cinematic. The opening shot of Teyana Taylor (as Ferguson’s lover and fellow revolutionary Perfidia Beverly Hills) walking across a California overpass that reveals an immigrant detention center below it is pretty damn glorious. In a shot-by-shot, frame-by-frame sense, One Battle After Another is unique and flawless.
The film establishes the relationship between Ferguson (then known as “Ghetto Pat”), Perfidia, and Lockjaw, as well as the daughter that emerges from the trio’s early encounters. Despite the ridiculous names of Taylor and Penn’s characters, I found the initial portion of One Battle After Another to be riveting. The ideas and execution at the beginning of the film would seem to set up a timely and fascinating story.
Unfortunately, the heady mix of politics, race, immigration, and radicalism doesn’t produce anything all that, well, radical. Those weighty topics are largely abandoned after the opening. Once the film jumps ahead sixteen years to find Bob sacked out and burnt out, half-heartedly raising his daughter Willa (played in winning fashion by relative newcomer Chase Infiniti), One Battle After Another becomes as sluggish as Bob slacking away on his couch in his ugly plaid robe.
The film has been roundly praised as being “of the moment.” While I understand the reasoning behind those thoughts (immigration, race, misuse of the military, and radical politics are all issues at the core of modern American life), I don’t see where One Battle After Another makes any sort of grand (be it specific or oblique) statement on any of the concerns it initially puts forth. The film just lurches from one scene to another, and as striking as it is visually and in all ways technical, I found myself wondering if there was any “there” there. I kept waiting for the moment when I would connect with the movie, but, to my great disappointment, the moment never came.
With names like Stephen Lockjaw and Perfidia Beverly Hills, you might think Anderson was going for a Dr. Strangelove-esque satire, but that never comes to the fore, either. The action scenes are very well done, but they are few and far between. The film is only fitfully funny, and the relationship between Bob and his daughter is not established well enough to make her fate, and Bob’s efforts to save her, nearly emotional enough.
What you are left with at the end of One Battle After Another is a film that’s a bit of everything, but a whole of nothing. Even the performances of DiCaprio and Penn, both of which have been widely praised, feel undercooked. I don’t lay this fault at the actors’ feet. DiCaprio is present and accounted for in every scene, and Penn (one of the greatest actors of his generation) has some fun with Lockjaw. (I particularly enjoyed how his character’s gait was as stiff as his surname). Even so, their characters never rise above caricature despite the two actors’ best efforts.
The female performances in the film are much more effective. Taylor has been scoring a great deal of Oscar buzz for her fierce portrayal as a pragmatic revolutionary, and it’s well-deserved, even if her character Perfidia largely disappears from the film once the story leaps a decade and a half forward. Chase Infiniti is striking as Willa, and watching her become resourceful and active in her own rescue was a delight, even if the conclusion of One Battle After Another doesn’t carry the weight it intends to concerning Willa’s outcome.
I do realize that my perspective on One Battle After Another is a minority one. This is a film that will not miss many year-end top ten best lists, and is likely to score several Oscar nominations. Despite my lukewarm feelings on the movie, I hope that it does well at the box office. Warner Brothers gave a true auteur a reported $175 million to make this film. That’s an extraordinary sum for a director who has never made a film that grossed more than $40 million (There Will Be Blood). I want films like this to get made, whether they resonate with me or not. I would also, perhaps paradoxically, recommend that people see One Battle After Another, despite my misgivings. As I pointed out, many critics that I greatly respect disagree with me, and are doing handstands and cartwheels over the movie. I just wish I could count myself among their number.
Reel Reframe 