One Battle After Another Doesn’t Know What it Wants to Say

by Will Hurst and Violeta Gonzalez, Contributors 

Illustration by Rishi Shah-Nelson

If critical praise and popular fervor are the main indicators of which films will receive the most accolades, Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is poised to sweep the Oscars, clinch Best Picture, and take home countless other awards. From a technical standpoint, this would be well-deserved; impeccably directed, acted, shot, and scored, just about every aspect of the film has been praised by critics. It’s an expertly-crafted film that works well as both a tense thriller and an odd-yet-touching “family drama.”

It’s also a movie that cares deeply about portraying “real issues,” spending a significant portion of its runtime grappling with subjects like left-wing politics, white supremacy, and intergenerational conflict. The sticking point, however, comes in the fact that the film is at its weakest when it attempts to comment on these issues, which ultimately undercuts the social and political messages that it tries to convey.

Violeta’s Notes 

The film’s premise in and of itself feels out of touch. Even if the concept of Paul Thomas Anderson directing a film focusing on anti-establishment ideologists starring Leonardo DiCaprio with a budget of over $100 million didn’t already sound like the setup for a very obvious punchline, the film’s writing accentuates this disconnect in a way that just can’t be ignored.

The first half hour of the movie focuses on the actions of the French 75, a fictitious far-left revolutionary group. The film opens with the militants successfully liberating detained immigrants from Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego. Explosions go off; militants are humiliated; Teyana Taylor’s character, Perfidia, confidently declares war on the imperial project that the facility’s officials actively work to uphold. 

Initially, their plan works, and it’s a pleasant surprise to see a more or less favorable depiction of leftist characters whose actions wind up having a net positive impact on the people they’re trying to help. But the feeling is short-lived; afterwards, the only other thing we get from the French 75 is a montage sequence of vague property destruction and trespassing. 

The film is seemingly unconcerned with the question of “why”—what are they hoping to accomplish by robbing a certain bank or destroying a certain transmission tower? With “fuck the government” as their broad mission statement, it’s difficult to understand what tangible impact the French 75 (which is, of course, conveniently never shown to have a distinct political belief system, its members labeled only as “revolutionaries”) hope their actions will have. 

After Perfidia’s daughter, Willa, is born, it’s Perfidia—who chooses to continue her work—who is villainized. Her struggle with postpartum depression means she cannot properly care for Willa, and she winds up “ratting out” her comrades and disappearing. Conversely, Bob, Willa’s father (DiCaprio), distances himself from his revolutionary lifestyle—and, consequently, his political beliefs; subsequently, the film seems to—intentionally or not—tacitly endorse the traditional home life over a revolutionary lifestyle.

At best, Anderson’s depiction and discussion of left-wing activism comes across as rather lazy, which is particularly disappointing given the fact that the movie was lauded for being distinctly refreshing in this regard. The film masquerades as more progressive than it really is, and the end result is an oft-tone-deaf product.

Will’s Notes

Many of the critical reviews of the movie have focused on its generational politics. Indeed, the film does utilize the cultural differences between generations to further its story, but the portrayal of these differences doesn’t really work as satire or witty social commentary.

Bob’s character and identity as a washed-up old radical that retreated to the wilderness parallels  the plot of the novel upon which the film is loosely based. Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland is a novel that is largely about how the hippie movement of the 1960s failed to change anything, and how its adherents eventually paved the way for Reagan and the nation’s rightward shift. While this narrative certainly makes sense in the context of Baby Boomers’ political legacy, it is somewhat perplexing to see it applied to Generation X. While the post-war generation had their “flower children,” Gen X was more or less viewed as materialistic and relatively unconcerned with politics from the beginning; it is less of an ironic surprise or reversal for the “MTV Generation” to enable fascism. 

The film seeks to transplant Pynchon’s metaphors about the Boomers to Gen X, a generation that grew up in an entirely different historical context and had vastly different resources and opportunities. Needless to say, this  does not work. Bob’s situation is not representative of anything but his own character, as there are no representations of real world sociopolitical shifts as there are in Vineland. This ultimately undermines the film’s supposed pertinence, as the more one thinks about this disconnect, the less the fictional world reflects any sort of reality, even in metaphorical terms.

Of course, one could argue that the film is simply trying to be a work of entertainment, but it is hard to argue this, given the frequency with which the movie utilizes political topics in its narrative. When one is interpreting the various characters and scenarios that make up the plot of the movie's nearly three hour runtime, it is difficult to shake the notion that it is trying to articulate some unique commentary about the modern world and its generational divides, but it never really gets there.