“Life, Man. Life!”
Thoughts on One Battle After Another, the movie of the year.
WARNING: THERE WILL BE ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER SPOILERS! I don’t know how to write this one without spoilers. You’ve been warned.
Are you happy? Do you have love? What will you do when you get older? Will you try to change the world like I did? We failed. Maybe you will not. Maybe you will be the one who puts the world right. -Perfidia Beverly Hills
One Battle After Another is Paul Thomas Anderson’s 10th film and his first set in the “present day.” Although fixed in a Thomas Pynchonian reality featuring a shadowy cabal called the Christmas Adventurers Club and a Bedford Forrest Medal of Honor1, it’s very obviously a treatise on the hellscape that we’re all currently living through.
There are racist and xenophobic ICE-esque raids masquerading as if they’re saving America, ignorant white men in charge, turning personal grievances into widespread terror and citizens facing off against massive police forces attempting to quash any and all hope of righteous rebellion. This is all explicit in the text of One Battle After Another, which is kind of shocking when looking at PTA’s previous nine films.
It’s not as if PTA isn’t against stirring the pot—he satirized L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology in The Master, for example—but for a filmmaker who’s tried his darndest to keep cell phones out of the picture2, constructing something this modern is an about-turn, to say the least.
I’m not Paul Thomas Anderson3, but I feel pretty comfortable saying that this is his most personal film, a story about a depleted, kinda-over-it white man with a mixed-race daughter who feels like shit that the world has gone to crap around him, just as the next generation is forced to pick things up where he (and his cohort) left off.
This movie's a lot of things, from a stoner buddy-comedy to a paranoid thriller, but at its core, One Battle is about the damaged world that gets passed down from generation to generation, and the regret that the former feels for not doing their part in making things better for the future. It says a lot that in the course of the movie’s runtime, after the prologue, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Bob Ferguson doesn’t actually do much. He spends most of the time either high or drinking, chasing after his daughter, always a step behind the main storyline. He, of course, taught Willa4 how to fend for herself and how to be an independent person moving through a brutal world, but over the final 120 minutes of the film, he’s obviously past his prime, just trying to find her and keep her safe.
In case you didn’t know, PTA is married to comedian Maya Rudolph, and the following section from a New York Times profile about her is almost used verbatim in One Battle. There’s no way this film isn’t unbelievably personal to the filmmaker, despite its obvious fictions and Vineland idiosyncrasies.
I’m not a parent, but I can’t say I’m not worried about the generations to come and stressed about my own work (or lack thereof) in trying to change things. Every news story is essentially “10 puppies kicked, no one does anything about it,” and then we have to go on with our day despite feeling like shit.
It’s evident that Paul Thomas Anderson made this movie with that mentality in mind, and thankfully, he added a bit of hope. In One Battle’s reality, there was the French 75 and now a full-blown resistance movement trying to make things better (even if it takes violent methods), as well as sanctuary cities, like Baktan Cross, in which good people are trying their best, whether it’s standing up to police brutality or running underground Harriet Tubman-esque immigration schemes.
This isn’t far off from where we stand now in 2025, but this entire movie feels like the following Mister Rogers quote: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”
There are plenty of movies with radical (or at least leftist) politics, fretting over the shape of the world, but almost all of them aren’t made by Paul Thomas Anderson, which is what turns this from a political soliloquy to a kinetic action masterpiece.
With a piano-bashing score that beckons back to 1970s neo-noir thrillers (à la The Conversation) and a constantly probing camera that locks in a more and more paranoid audience, One Battle After Another is as good as movies get. It’s not often we get one of the funniest comedies of the year with honest-to-god movie stars inside of a ticking time-bomb thriller with real money behind it. This movie looks better than basically anything else this year, and is already firmly in the driver’s seat for Best Picture and any other award it’ll be up for.
DiCaprio and Infiniti deserve every single plaudit they receive, and yet none of this works without Sean Penn’s Col. Steven J. Lockjaw, a frightening cartoon character5 of a man, and Del Toro’s Sensei Sergio St. Carlos, a cool-as-a-cucumber revolutionary and guy I want to drink a Modelo with.
Like PTA’s best work, every frame is filled with side characters that you want to know more about, and character actors are given ample opportunity to shine. There’s nothing else like an Anderson movie when the stars align.
PTA also gives real roles to stars who deserve more from mainstream Hollywood, most notably Teyana Taylor and Regina Hall, who play French 75ers with contrasting tactics. The opening 30-minute-or-so prologue belongs to Taylor’s Perfidia Beverly Hills, and she takes over the screen from the first shot. PTA has said as much:
She’s a filmmaker, not just an actress. She really understands a set and the camera and the experience and movement of a crew. Her face is one of the most beautiful and unique I’ve ever seen in my life. Photographing her face is pure joy.
Perhaps I’m rambling at this point, but very rarely do you get a movie like this with so much to say that actually says it, and also is a genuine crowdpleaser for nearly three hours. It’s a miracle that this came together the way it did, and you should see it as soon as possible.6
I’ve been thinking about the end of One Battle ever since my first screening—yes, I’ve seen it twice in IMAX already—in which Willa teaches Bob how to use a cell phone and then gets called to action to help out at a protest in Oakland.
She’s taken the baton from Bob, and although the two will continue to stay in touch, Bob doesn’t need to chase after her anymore. It must be a dilemma for any parent desiring the best for their progeny, caught between hoping they stay safe while also wanting them to try to make things better and continue fighting the good fight. Bob had his day in the sun, and now it’s up to his daughter.
Willa’s her own woman in the world now and is using her newfound political consciousness to help others who might need the same assistance she got from the former French 75ers. It’s just what Bob wants and also his biggest fear.
The song “American Girl” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers begins to play, and the shot cuts as Willa gets into the car, about to drive away. It’s an endcap to one story and the beginning of a new one. It also features an almost-too-obvious musical cue that doesn’t care about its simplicity when it comes to getting the point across: Chase Infiniti/Willa is what an “American girl” looks like, a woman of a variety of races and backgrounds wanting to do something to help others. It’s hopeful, even despite the violence and evil frequently popping up in the 160-ish minutes leading up to this final shot.
DiCaprio’s name is at the top of the poster—no surprise there—but the real story here is Willa’s maturation and newfound desire to keep the revolution afloat. PTA, welcome to the resistance. And One Battle After Another, welcome to the pantheon.
Bedford Forrest was the first KKK Grand Wizard.
It usually feels as if PTA prefers to look back in time to how we got to this place, as opposed to doing something so definitively in the now.
sorry
played incredibly by Chase Infiniti
so much Popeye in his mannerisms
I would hope you’ve seen it already. But just in case, I threw this in here.