One Battle After Another
Which I've Managed to Write With Zero Spoilers
Paul Thomas Anderson has become a signifier in the way someone can be a Joe Rogan Bro, that sparks assumptions about their lifestyle and political leanings. Be that as it may (be honest, these sorts of labels are meant to come with a smidge of shame) I am, and always have been, an out and out PTA bro. He’s one of those directors, along with The Coen brothers and Aronofsky and Todd Haynes and Tarantino, who’s been with me for as long as I’ve been into cinema.
PTA started off making sweeping American epics - Boogie Nights, Magnolia - in the mould of Scorsese before he blew his career up with the hallucinogenic and jittery masterpiece Punch-Drunk Love, which now looks like a left turn he took before moving onto classic period dramas (There Will Be Blood, The Master, Inherent Vice, Phantom Thread, Liquorice Pizza). One Battle After Another looks like another turning point in his career.
The closer this post gets to writing about One Battle… specifically, the more I realise I don’t have a way into the film. The sentence film journalist would put in around the second or third paragraph would be: One Battle… follows a washed-up leftwing terrorist (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his daughter (Chase Infinity) as they are hunted by a neo-Nazi wannabe (Sean Penn). But the plot really isn’t the point. The point is the counter-intuitive yet ecstatic editing that pieces scenes together, allowing the film to breeze over large chunks of time before resting in individual moments. The perfect visual accompaniment for Johnny Greenwood’s score.
There’s no such thing as a mediocre Johnny Greenwood soundtrack. I urge readers to check out all of them but especially the film You Were Never Really Here, praise about which doesn’t get enough airtime. As with many viewers, I was blown away by his soundtrack for There Will Be Blood. I remember thinking that, along with Mica Levi’s score for Under the Skin, it was the first major step forward in movie soundtracks since… I don’t know when. Probably Kubrick’s use of Ligeti, which Greenwood is often compared to. The One Battle… soundtrack does it again: alien, reminiscent of Cage’s early percussion and prepared piano pieces, yet melancholic.
The film’s frantic, propulsive, vibe made me think back to There Will Be Blood. I know I’m not the first to say this, but multiple writers have said it for a reason: I remember watching There Will Be Blood and thinking, Am I watching nothing happening? Does PTA know that creates confusion? Is what I think is happening actually happening? Piecing the film back after watching it, I realised the narrative slotted together perfectly. Watching One Battle… feels like the stoner paranoia of DiCaprio’s character but, playing the film back in my head, it holds together in the most rigorous way.
DiCaprio’s great. He’s at a point in his career where audiences know they’ll get solid work from their 90s heartthrob. But - I can’t emphasise this enough - holy fucking shit Sean Penn? For context, Milk is what I always think of when I think of Sean Penn. That is My Sean Penn Movie. Milk is kind-hearted and (in the right way!) effortless cinema: Penn’s performance is kind-hearted and effortless in it. Now, compare that to his role in One Battle… It’s effortless (in the sense of lived-in, totally natural) but holy fucking shit. His gait, his very intentional use of a resting face, the way the character’s sociopathy is ratcheted up as the film progresses… Every second he’s on screen is electric.
Benicio del Toro is an actor I’ll watch in anything. I also need to praise Teyana Taylor as a nymphomaniac revolutionary and Chase Infinity who, through her pitch-perfect performance, gives the film a sense of stability, reminding the audience of its heart.
There is the matter of the film’s underperformance at the box office, but I’d remind critics that the film cost $130 million and Box Office Mojo lists the worldwide gross at around $202 million. While I’m not entirely sure what constitutes breaking even at the box office, my point is: by any other film’s standards One Battle… made a ton. I did find myself wondering where the film’s budget went and, putting aside the A-list actors, no one does set pieces like PTA. They’re grand yet completely natural. Like the film crew turned up to a place that already existed and started filming.
Much like Punch-Drunk Love, another box office flop, time will be very kind to One Battle… Honestly, you can hear the postgrad theses being written as the film unfolds: LA riots, ideology, racism, black feminism, et al. It will also be remembered as one of the last masterpieces from the end of cinema, or the end of this iteration of cinema. I don’t know which.
How does One Battle… rank personally? When I try and think about my favourite PTA movies, my thoughts skitter around like DiCaprio’s character’s. My head says The Master and Punch-Drunk Love and Boogie Nights and Magnolia (I even have a lot of love for Inherent Vice, Anderson’s most divisive film) but my heart says Phantom Thread. I know full well One Battle… will be up there. A perfect rainy afternoon film on account of its length and, it has to be said, absurd humour. It really is a masterpiece.