Icon Leonardo DiCaprio and newcomer Chase Infiniti burn up the screen in this chaotic yet engrossing action flick that feels timely yet timeless simultaneously.
I just got back from watching this film at the Paseo Nuevo theater in downtown Santa Barbara, and holy shit. Where has this film been all year?
Despite being adapted by the 1990 novel Vineland by Thomas Pinchon, this film feels like it was made explicitly for this year. Leonardo DiCaprio plays disillusioned and alcoholic former revolutionary Bob Ferguson, currently living with his daughter Willa on the outskirts of society. Willa’s mother Perfidia was Bob’s girlfriend when she gave birth, but she became resentful of the new family dynamic and left them shortly after Willa was born. But when a vicious colonel played by Sean Penn goes after her, it’s up to Bob to put on his revolutionary shoes and rescue his daughter, with the help of some allies.
When I think of Paul Thomas Anderson, I think of There Will Be Blood (2007) and Licorice Pizza (2020), the kind of cerebral dramas that touch on deep themes of human connection and the frailties of modernity. One Battle After Another touches on similar themes, but does so amidst a background of authoritarianism and political violence. We don’t get much information on the political situation, but there’s enough hints and clues that it has to deal with detaining migrants and a harsh crackdown on dissent. So, it’s basically today.
But while this movie is undoubtedly political, I wouldn’t say it was solely meant to be a political commentary. The prologue we get at the start of the film details Bob and Perfidia’s relationship, who was filled with passion, lust, and a revolutionary fervor. Both believe that the authoritarian government cannot stand, and use a number of violent means to achieve their ends. But once Perfidia gives birth, she becomes depressed and resentful towards Pat and her child, which she feels deeply ashamed of. I really appreciated how they didn’t make Perfidia out to be some neglectful mother. She did abandon her family, but realizing you have something to lose can make you extremely wary of continuing life as normal.
When we catch up to Bob and his daughter Willa in the current day, they are both on the rocks, with Pat becoming a jaded alcoholic and Willa a strong and confident young woman. Worst of all, Bob is now aggressively paranoid, to the point he forbids the teenage Willa from having a phone out of concern for their safety. Their house is nothing more than a few rooms in a shadowy part of the woods, with a glade showing helicopters hovering above them. Although they have a life, they are never truly safe.
It gets worse when Bob and Willa are separated. Colonel Lockjaw knew Perfidia before Willa was born, and is now after her so he can settle something from his past so he can advance. Once he raids the house, Bob and Willa are forced to relearn how to be revolutionaries. Bob struggles to remember old resistance passwords and keep up with young people, whereas Willa learns the truth about her mother and must rely on her wits to stay alive. In a sense, Bob becomes young again, and Willa must come of age.
The title One Battle After Another comes from a line in the film where one of the characters describe what will happen after the next scheme, but it also applies to Bob and Willa’s dynamic. Neither of them know what will happen next, but they have to rely on what they know in the present moment to make it back to each other. More importantly, the farther they are apart, the more they feel closer to one another. When Willa is sheltered from one place to another, she is sobbing in bed and realizing that her imagined picture of her mother was all a fiction, and that her dad is all she has left. As for Bob, he is no longer the revolutionary he thought he was, but that doesn’t mean he still can’t rely on others to help him. In fact, the strongest asset in this movie is community, where interconnected systems of support hurry migrants to their next sanctuary city, and convents are places for refugees to get their fight back.
It’s easy to get caught up in the politics of this movie, and that’s not by accident. Images of detention centers and police raids have been on our screens for the past ten or so years, to the point where we barely think of them as news anymore. Everything feels so out of control it just feels easy to coop yourself up in your home and drink away your misery so it doesn’t feel like it’s your problem anymore. And maybe the old ways of fighting are done. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still fight.
Bob and Willa’s transformations throughout this film are one of the best cinematic journeys I’ve been on this year. I was on the edge of my seat in the last half hour of this near 3-hour film. Amidst all the gunfire and raids and general mayhem, there’s a genuine heart that keeps beating. You keep rooting for these two mismatched people to reunite, despite Bob’s constant failures and screwups. Ultimately, this film is not about ideology, or even about politics. It’s about working through the kinks and realizing that all we have is each other.
BEYOND THE FRAME 
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