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A primary screening of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” largely establishes the delight of experiencing it anew. The film, clocking in at two hours and forty-one minutes, overflows with rapidly unfolding, complex activity and elaborate discourse, while the editing swiftly alternates between its profuse assortment of settings, occurrences, and figures. Upon my initial viewing, I grappled to maintain pace with the unfolding events—yet that sensation of lagging was amplified by an absence of psychological comprehension, a perception that the characters were being animated by script demands rather than deriving from dramatic rationale or intrinsic impetus. During a subsequent viewing, I relinquished my apprehension: cognizant of the impending developments, I relished the nuances all the more. The narrative’s progression proved equally captivating as the tale itself, the behavioral convolutions as exhilarating as those of the plot. The impression of randomness that had previously perplexed and irritated me was eclipsed by fervor and unadulterated aesthetic gratification.
Anderson, serving as both author and director, curtails psychological profundity, fashioning characters who exist as mere abstractions. This culminates in a cinematic endeavor that, notwithstanding its intensely genuine and instinctively corporeal action, embodies a monumental symbolic configuration. The movie exists in an unusual, peculiar dialectical state within itself—comprising numerous strata that neither converge nor harmonize, instead reflecting and intensifying tension. Amidst these inconsistencies, voids, discords, and contradictions, a comprehensive coherence materializes.
Were the subject matter commonplace or trivial, the methodology would merely offer a sequence of escapades. However, this narrative centers on profound political urgencies. Situated within an alternate iteration of the United States, it encompasses leftist insurgents, the government’s predominantly successful endeavors to subdue them, and the protracted repercussions—both personal and communal—of the insurrection. Periodically, Anderson diminishes the principled zeal inherent in proactive, aggressive opposition, yet there is no triviality in his portrayal of shattered existences and connections, nor in an American society shaken to its foundation. Furthermore, in portraying the substantial shifts of his concocted history, including its contemporary counterpart, he gazes profoundly beyond the immediate parameters of his fiction to attain potent insights concerning the present-day horrors. The film embodies the radical derangements of dominion, and the facets of enlightenment that might offer anticipation (however sentimental that notion might appear), even from a remote vantage point.
“One Battle After Another” commences abruptly with two revolutionaries—Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) and Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio), known by the nicknames Ghetto Pat and Rocket Man—joining members of their dissident faction, the French 75, for an armed assault on an immigration holding center proximate to the U.S.-Mexico boundary. While succeeding in liberating roughly half of the detainees, the ensemble concurrently broadcasts its presence and aims: this proves to be merely the initial episode in a chain of offensives. The French 75 detonates a campaign headquarters belonging to a senator who sanctioned an abortion prohibition; it blasts a financial institution; it explodes a transmission tower. (Anderson depicts, with an aloof sense of wonder, the lights extinguishing across the metropolis it serves.) Their revolution extends to the sexual realm, or is sexualized: when Perfidia storms into the commanding officer’s tent at the detention hub, Captain Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), she instructs him to induce an erection, and, with that tentpole prominent beneath his sleepwear, escorts him outward. In the automobile en route from the assault, Perfidia and Pat engage in intimate behavior; while Pat tutors Perfidia on the intricacies of bomb construction, she perches atop him and initiates coitus; as they sprint away from the transmission tower where they’ve secreted explosives, she desires them to copulate in nature just before the detonation. Brandishing a fully automatic firearm for target rehearsal, she informs a female compatriot, “Pussy isn’t for pleasure. This constitutes the enjoyment. The firearms represent the real fucking pleasure.”
The sexual activity also bears racial implications: early in the picture, Perfidia, who identifies as Black, queries Pat, who identifies as white, regarding his attraction to Black women. When she commands Lockjaw, likewise white, to become erect, he has just referred to her as “sweet thang.” And, in a pivotal juncture, Lockjaw apprehends Perfidia but pledges to release her upon her agreement to rendezvous with him in a motel accommodation. She adheres to the proposition, concealing the encounter from Pat, and conceives a child, lacking awareness of the father’s identity. She and Pat christen the infant, a female, Charlene, and Pat eventually rears her independently, subsequent to Perfidia’s capture, informing on the collective, and entering witness safety. Pat and Charlene acquire fabricated identities and abscond. Sixteen years onward, they reside collectively within a sanctuary municipality designated Baktan Cross; Charlene, now identified as Willa (and portrayed by a remarkable young actress named Chase Infiniti), attends secondary institution, and Pat, presently addressed as Bob, engages solely in narcotics, alcohol consumption, and idleness. Abruptly, Lockjaw, now holding the rank of colonel, is impelled to seize Willa and pursue Bob, and the remainder of the film encompasses the motivations underpinning his pursuit, the endeavors of Bob and Willa to evade capture, their subsequent separation, and their courageous struggle to reunite.
A preeminent facet of celebrated films depicting radical action during an era of genuine upheaval—such as Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Zabriskie Point” and Robert Kramer’s “Ice”—is debate. The prerequisites, both ideologically and pragmatically, to orchestrate an assemblage that undertakes aggressive action is enthralling, as it remains inextricably linked to the underlying dynamism that imbues the drama with its emotive vitality—the metamorphosis of fervor into action. Such elements are absent in “One Battle After Another.” Factionalism, tenets, governing principles, justifications are, within Anderson’s cinematic realm, inconsequential, implying that the French 75’s actions unfold within an intellectual emptiness. Revolution manifests as an inherent condition rather than an accomplishment, bearing closer resemblance to a social club than to a military force. The political climate that Anderson elucidates, within the narrative’s early episodes, essentially constitutes a matter of sentiments. Yet the movie’s sentiments are not wholly frivolous, as they resonate agonizingly in proximity to the prevailing atmosphere. Notwithstanding the scarcity of political specifics, the comparisons remain unambiguous: Anderson portrays law enforcement and military personnel coalescing to confine nonwhite individuals in what effectively function as internment facilities, while a suppressive and prescriptive authority permits an official to indulge his idiosyncrasies through the exploitation of power.
While observing the initial segment of “One Battle After Another,” I was reminded of a scene derived from another acclaimed film addressing leftist radicals and their designs for revolutionary aggression: Jean-Luc Godard’s “La Chinoise.” Within that context, a woman named Véronique (Anne Wiazemsky), an affiliate of a Paris-based cell, chances to encounter a philosophy professor (the actual philosopher Francis Jeanson, portraying himself). She acquaints him with her group’s strategies to shutter their university via explosives; he informs her that she and her collective will be apprehended long before they attain such objectives. She reminds him that, during the Algerian War, he had been targeted by the police—Jeanson did indeed collaborate with pro-Algerian activists in France—and succeeded in evading capture. Jeanson clarifies, “Because the French populace harbored numerous sympathizers. Because even those not entirely supportive of Algerian sovereignty did not denounce us.” He proceeds: “Your initiative will yield futility if it fails to be embraced by a community, by a stratum.”
That discourse, and those utterances, exemplify the stakes permeating the sixteen-year interval separating the two sections of “One Battle After Another.” If the initial depiction of the French 75 and its campaign of aggression incorporates an element of derision, it stems from the notion of a vanguard that, far removed from being rooted in a community, intends to instigate a revolution autonomously and presumes to steer society into drastic alterations that lack anything approximating consensus behind them—and by means of tactics that garner even less backing or sympathy.
Minute alterations have transpired, a narration asserts, throughout the sixteen years spanning the scattering of the French 75 and Bob and Willa’s confrontation with military aggression within Baktan Cross. The narration embodies both veracity and irony. Indubitably, certain aspects persist: unrelenting governmental oppression of immigrants; the Army functioning closely with intensely militarized police forces and, under Lockjaw’s stewardship, still orchestrating violent incursions; the U.S. enduring what is essentially an occupation by its own governance, a nation besieged from within. However, transformations have occurred in other realms. Within Baktan Cross, an organized resistance with deep community ties exists. Its leader, a martial-arts instructor, sensei Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro), orchestrates what he terms “a modest Latino Harriet Tubman enterprise at my locale.” When combat units target immigrants, organized demonstrations transpire in conjunction with an intricately devised escape operation. (This impression of informal concurrence contrasts with a fascinating and emblematic facet of the film: the absence of electoral governance. There are no political factions, no campaigns, no addresses from Presidents or other officials, no discernible correlation between the apparatus, however misused, of democracy and the deplorable condition of the nation.)
The embeddedness of resistance manifests in alternative forms, too, exemplified in the French 75, which, even sixteen years subsequently, retains some semblance of existence. One affiliate from bygone epochs (Paul Grimstad) now oversees a guerrilla radio platform, and, upon his abduction, local inhabitants perceive and act on the broadcaster’s behalf. The assemblage itself appears to have evolved into more of a rescue entity than a contingent of warriors: the endeavor to safeguard Willa from Lockjaw is spearheaded by another veteran member named Deandra (Regina Hall), and a substantial compound of heavily armed activists apparently operates another variant of sanctuary. They have discovered a means to connect with the communal sympathies and, consequently, to secure aid and succor.
A segment of distinction within the film portrays Bob, subsequent to an apprehension, receiving clandestine assistance from several improbable origins: a scattering of leading inquiries, a gesture of affirmation or negation, a judicious directive, some audacious behind-the-scenes communications, and he is released. The scene embodies the exquisite aestheticism with which Anderson conveys the turbulent and grand-scale drama onto the cinematic canvas. If modern cinema finds definition in the abstract correlations between a narrative and its rendition, the apex of classicism comprises concrete correlations rendered stylistically. Anderson exhibits a classicism that is simultaneously acutely self-aware and capable of extracting immense potency from a startling phrase or gesture, an inventively assembled shot, even a visually arresting prop or item of attire. “One Battle After Another” stands as a superior action film—not solely by virtue of its taut suspense, its instinctive thrills, and its robust rooting interests but, principally, due to the exuberant ingenuity with which particulars are deployed, moment by moment, to encapsulate the storyline.
Anderson elicits indelible inflections of dialogue, focused gazes, audacious bursts of dynamism and eruptions of ire from his magnetic ensemble, rendering “One Battle After Another” a banquet of inspired and committed acting. Concurrently, certain performances—particularly Penn’s but, at times, even DiCaprio’s—incline toward satirical exaggeration. Anderson establishes his antagonists with an apt aura of mockery, the unintentional buffoonery of nescience and haughtiness, even as his protagonists, despite their inherent flaws, are adorned with his appreciative gaze. Yet, curiously and dismayingly, as military and governmental trappings prove so familiar from preceding films and thus readily adopted by this one, Lockjaw appears more firmly established within his political milieu than Pat/Bob and Perfidia within theirs. As a consequence, “The Big Lebowski,” in its outlandish yet learned humor, proves more illuminating and touching in its portrayal of disillusioned idealism, of an ex-radical gone to seed, than Anderson’s film.
Notwithstanding the extraordinary opulence of the sensory and dramatic texture characterizing “One Battle After Another,” no submerged iceberg of experience or knowledge underpins its majestic summit. Regardless of any ethical or historical import attached to the prominence of political discourse and scrutiny within such films as “La Chinoise” and “Zabriskie Point,” their documentary rapport with experience warrants attention. Both films materialized concurrently with political action of the categories they depict, and both films forge documentary-esque contact with actual activists. They showcase the tangible labor of revolution, whereas Anderson’s film underscores its emotive labor. In enacting this, he crafts a movie that exists as both brilliant and hollow, an old-fashioned movie addressing the contemporary world (and perhaps the future), a vision of promising potentialities that remains untethered from realities. Yet his film, even in its omissions, overflows with strategic adroitness and daring, cinematically and politically—to contest other films’ vacuous fantasies with substantial ones, to combat other advocates’ detrimental myths with virtuous counterparts. ♦
Sourse: newyorker.com
