One Battle After Another: Paul T. Anderson's Least Cryptic Film is a Violent, Tense Carnival Ride

By Karen Gordon

Rating: A

Paul Thomas Anderson, whose latest film One Battle After Another opens this week, is one of the best writer/directors of his generation. 

But no one who knows and/or loves his work—and I count myself amongst both groups— goes to a PTA film expecting them to be straightforward or simple.  That’s not how his mind works. 

Even his closest thing to a rom-com, Punch Drunk Love with an out-of-his-comfort-zone Adam Sandler, was a long, complicated and anxiety filled movie.  And Phantom Thread, an exploration of a love story and marriage, was also marked by power struggles and love expressed through resistance and frustration.

Leonardo DiCaprio in One Battle After Another

No one does anxiety and stress quite like PTA. 

His movies are large scale stories that seem at times to ramble or take us to why-the-eff are-we-here moments.  And yet, Like a ride at the carnival, even when the film swings out in ways that you didn’t expect, you know you’re in safe hands. PTA never loses control. His movies can be maddening, full of weirdo characters. But by the end of the film, even if you’re still grappling with what you just saw, you’re sorry to see them go.

And they are always beautifully cast, meticulously shot and edited, with great soundtracks.

And so it is with One Battle After Another, a tense action, thriller, drama, comedy about a lot of things—sociopaths, narcissists, white supremacists, violent political extremists fighting the system for whatever reason, and people who make bad choices. But ultimately One Battle After Another is about a father and daughter, and I think about one of PTA’s big themes: Love.  But that’s just me. 

The film, is inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland (It’s the second time PTA has adapted a Pynchon novel, the first was 2014’s Inherent Vice).  

In yet another tremendous performance, Leonardo DiCaprio is Pat, a hapless renegade, part of the French 75, a group of violent, anti-capitalist nihilists  fighting the government - in particular ICE. A fellow freedom fighter in his cell is Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor). She’s confident and committed to fighting the system. She’s also the love of his life. It’s a bit like a bunny being in love with a tiger. 

On a raid to free detainees, Perfidia confronts the commander, the incredibly named Steven J. Lockjaw (a deliciously creepy Sean Penn), in a brazenly sexual way. Lockjaw is a tough, weird caricature of a military man, the kind of character who would fit easily into the world of Dr. Strangelove. He is deeply in lust.

Perfidia and Pat have a daughter, but domestic bliss isn’t in the cards for them. She’s more committed to ideology than a baby and family, and she disappears.

With law enforcement closing in on their cell, Pat and his daughter get new identities: He becomes Bob Ferguson, and she’s now named Willa.

Flash forward 16 years, Bob has never really gotten things together.  He lives off the grid with Willa (newcomer Chase Infiniti in what is absolutely a break-out role), and he comes across as a paranoid stoner and alcoholic, with a wardrobe that pays homage to The Dude.  

Perhaps incredibly, Willa is a together teenager, who loves her father, and is used to his paranoid quirks.  She also has a second father figure in her martial arts teacher, Sensei Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio Del Toro), who teaches her focus and discipline.

This comes in handy when the past catches up to them at her school dance, in the form of a murderous Lockjaw and a surprise protector named Deandra (Regina Hall). When Bob gets wind of Willa’s peril, he springs into action still in his bathrobe, joined by Sensei. 

One Battle After Another is a long film, running nearly three hours, with twists and turns you can’t necessarily predict, more characters and subplots, a tone that shifts from drama to comedy to incredibly tense confrontations, and a car chase over rolling terrain that is both simple, and thrilling.  

PTA Is a master of shifting tones in a second and making it seem completely natural.  The film was shot on location in San Diego County in VistaVision by DOP Michael Bauman, (go see it at a theatre for maximum enjoyment) with music by his frequent collaborator Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead fame and costume designs by multi Oscar winner Colleen Atwood.

And of course, that tone is also set by a seriously strong cast. If Oscars are your metric, just about anyone in the cast could be nominated. These include DiCaprio, and Penn, but also Del Toro, King, Taylor, and Infiniti. The latter shows incredible strength in that venerable company.

There is already a debate about whether One Battle After Another is Paul Thomas Anderson’s best film yet.
To me, that’s a pointless discussion given his filmography and the breadth of subjects he's taken on.   It might be his most violent, and his least cryptic. But it’s very much a PTA film, and for a lot of us, that’s enough.

One Battle After Another. Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Starring Leonardo DeCaprio, Sean Penn, Chase Infiniti, Teyana Taylor, and Regina Hall. In theatres September 26.