No one can say that Paul Thomas Anderson lacks ambition. Even the director’s smaller films are full of big ideas and breathtaking visuals, and he never puts anything less than the full weight of his substantial talent into any of his movies.
That’s why I can always appreciate an Anderson movie even if I don’t particularly like it, and I found myself appreciating and admiring his new film “One Battle After Another” a bit more than I liked it. It is often fascinating and occasionally heartbreaking, but it’s also kind of a sprawling mess, with a story split across two time periods, 16 years apart.
The life of onetime radical left-wing activist Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) is defined by two different women during those separate time frames, first by his girlfriend and fellow activist Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), then by his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti), whom he raises following Perfidia’s disappearance.
Very loosely inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel “Vineland,” “One Battle After Another” is a vast epic with unexpected timeliness, and it’s also an intimate story about a complicated father-daughter relationship. It’s full of big, bold performances and elaborate set pieces, and it’s worth checking out on a big screen (I saw it in IMAX) just for Anderson’s achievement in old-fashioned cinematic wonder.
‘One Battle After Another’ takes on relevant yet timeless social issues
While Pynchon’s novel splits its setting between the 1960s and the 1980s, Anderson updates the story to approximately the present day, although there are elements of Bob’s political activities that resemble tactics of decades earlier. That makes “One Battle After Another” both urgent and timeless, with social commentary that applies directly to modern-day issues just as clearly as it does to events of the past.
In the movie’s first hour, Bob (under his given name of Pat) is part of a radical leftist vigilante group known as the French 75, who engage in direct action that includes bombing various government and corporate buildings and liberating prisoners from an ICE-like detention center.
That’s where Bob’s associate and lover Perfidia first meets Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), a sleazy, vengeful military commander who blackmails her into a sexual relationship and ultimately turns her against the group.
Before Perfidia betrays her compatriots, she gives birth to a baby, and Bob’s devotion to the child drives a wedge into their relationship. While Perfidia is focused on continuing their revolutionary work, Bob is more concerned about the family they’re now raising. Perfidia’s recklessness ultimately puts her back into the hands of Col. Lockjaw, forcing her to make an impossible choice.
Sixteen years later, Bob is in hiding with the now-teenage Willa, living in a small California hamlet that’s designated itself a sanctuary town. Lockjaw’s power has only increased, and he brings the full force of his military authority down on the town residents, seeking not only to capture Bob and Willa but also to terrorize the local population of undocumented immigrants.
The images of camouflage-clad police raiding a chicken-processing plant and rounding up the workers could have come right out of a recent news broadcast.
‘One Battle After Another’ demonstrates PTA’s cinematic mastery
DiCaprio gives an alternately heartbreaking and funny performance as Bob, who’s let himself go during his years in hiding, and now bears a slight resemblance to Jeff Bridges’ The Dude in “The Big Lebowski,” another former revolutionary now content to lie on the couch and smoke pot. Bob even spends nearly half the movie clad in a bathrobe, and his befuddlement over strict underground rebellion protocol provides some of the movie’s funniest moments.
Penn plays Lockjaw as a deeply repressed pervert, in a way that’s often more ridiculous than menacing, and his absurd interactions with a secret society of powerful old white men recall another Coen brothers movie, “Burn After Reading.”
Still, “One Battle After Another” is less comedic and freewheeling than Anderson’s last Pynchon adaptation, 2014’s more faithful “Inherent Vice,” and it sometimes seems to be searching for a proper tone.
When Anderson fully dials in, though, he can present some breathtaking images, especially in a climactic car chase along hilly roads in the California desert. The POV shots of drivers going up and down those rises and dips generate mounting suspense, building to an inexorable confrontation. “One Battle After Another” is by far Anderson’s biggest-budget movie, and he demonstrates considerable skill at staging tense, exciting action.
‘One Battle After Another’ delivers compelling chaos
With a running time that closes in on three hours, “One Battle After Another” sometimes feels like it’s gotten away from itself, especially in the protracted siege of the town by Lockjaw’s forces. Whenever Anderson seems to be losing his way, though, he comes back with a startling burst of violence or a surprisingly tender emotional moment.
“One Battle After Another” may be too unfocused to count among Anderson’s best work, but it keeps up his track record of making must-see movies, regardless of their ultimate outcome.
“One Battle After Another” opens September 26 in theaters
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