Paul Thomas Anderson’s electrifying action thriller is one brilliant sequence after another. One Battle After Another is perhaps Anderson’s best work and this year’s best American film. It keeps you glued to the screen because it's erotic, political, hilarious, passionate, populist, provocative and emotionally charged.
Based on Thomas Pynchon's 1990s novel Vineland about the ragtag band of militants who free immigrants from detention centres and bomb government offices and military bases, it’s a big-budget movie that is too brilliant to depend on any artificial effect. The film kicks off like a climax, with militants called the French 75, to whom revolution is an orgasm. A sexually humiliated military officer, Colonel Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn), takes revenge on militant Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), who is the lover of the bomb expert Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio). The wild Perfidia is arrested, forced to betray many of her colleagues and is put under a witness protection programme. She manages to flee and disappear. Then the film settles down in present times, where Ferguson is now a drug addict and failed revolutionary who is somehow managing to survive and look after his daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti).
The film actually doesn’t settle down but becomes a rollercoaster ride. Lockjaw is obsessed with Perfidia, whom he cannot find and is now desperate to capture his biological daughter and erase his dirty past. He hires an indigenous bounty hunter who captures Ferguson’s comrade, triggering a distress signal among the remaining members of French 75. Willa is extracted from her school by a former ally of the cause, Deandra (Regina Hall) and taken to a rendezvous point, a convent run by revolutionary nuns. Here she learns that her mother had ratted against her comrades.
A confused, jaded, bumbling, perpetually hungover, paranoid Ferguson, the non-biological father, who spends his time watching The Battle of Algiers on video, wakes up from his stupor and tries to become the militant he once was, and rescue his daughter. But he can’t remember passwords to get back to guerrilla warfare. He seeks the help of his Mexican friend Sensei (Benicio del Toro), who is Willa’s karate teacher and runs an underground immigrant movement.
Ferguson, with Sensei’s connection and an old rifle, is helped by immigrant kids, is captured, then freed by Sensei’s connections, manages to reach the rendezvous point, fails to shoot Lockjaw and races after them in his battered car… yes, it’s one helluva road movie which is very intelligently turned into powerful political cinema that ends in a nail-biting chase on the undulating roads of the Arizona desert. A chase that turns into an almost dreamlike, hypnotic experience that reminds you of Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point.
It’s undeniably the most boldly political cinema in recent times. Anderson does it with a brilliant screenplay and a certain sensuality that is almost Tarantino-esque yet far more realistic and committed. Keeping the hilarious comedy intact, it manages to become a truly contemporary pop film, serving as a “wake-up” call to confront the brutally crazy world as it actually is, and emerges as hugely passionate and human. It offers the audience a Quixotic choice to take a stance. Michael Bauman’s breathtaking cinematography is gritty as well as poetic. This is heightened by Jonny Greenwood’s hauntingly minimal background score, which is almost like an alarm bell that keeps you alert throughout.
The key to the cinematic success of Anderson is the highly sexy editing of Andy Jurgensen. It keeps you almost hanging onto a sequence to cut to another sequence, then cut back to the previous. He keeps repeating this Inarritu-like process so brilliantly that it creates a certain symphony which literally becomes “one breath after another”. That Ferguson’s Mexican ally, Sensei, keeps telling everybody to “breathe easy” literally becomes a cinematic metaphor.
Topping the list in terms of performance is Sean Penn as the psychosexual Colonel Lockjaw. It is perhaps Penn’s best performance to date. You almost actually fall in love with this violent cartoon of a marine who is as dangerous as he is vulnerable. This monster is sexually humiliated by the militant Perfidia, and she fries Lockjaw’s mind before he launches a battle against her and the militants.
It’s a weird proposition, but Anderson and Penn pull it off in a masterly fashion. Penn, with all his hilarious monstrosity, comes out as a very vulnerable idiot. Penn plays it out with such relish and sexy brilliance that you end up feeling bad when he is gassed.
Teyana Taylor’s Perfidia is absolutely super as the violent mother, to whom the cause is far more important than her daughter. That she breaks down to Lockjaw and betrays some of her colleagues is one of the high points of this film, and keeps you guessing whether she was wrong to save herself and her daughter or was she just a rat. Taylor is simply stupendous as the unabashed militant who cares much more than she shows. Her final letter to her daughter, Willa, is so heart-wrenching that her voice-over manages to give the audience that final ray of hope. “We tried to make this world a better place and failed. It’s up to you baby, to make your choice."
Chase Infiniti, as the daughter, is a bomb. Infiniti is simply superb as she slowly becomes like her militant, violent mother and no longer willy-nilly. I know Anderson’s screenplay came in handy, but Infiniti becomes the backbone of the movie.
To me, Leonardo DiCaprio's Ferguson is the best thing he has ever pulled off till date. A pure Oscar-deserving performance of a punch-drunk, bumbling father who was once a Bader Meinhof-type revolutionary, now an average guy desperate to save his daughter, despite not being her biological father. It is simply too good to be true.
Now, DiCaprio is famous for his confused, terrified, heart-in-the-knee type of desperate characters that made The Wolf of Wall Street, Shutter Island or even The Departed shattering. Yet, as Ferguson, he manages to actually better himself and reach a unique height in what he is very good at. His shifty eyes, combining the anxiety of a desperate father and a failed revolutionary, are too delightful to forget for years.
The final confrontation sequence, where Willia, the daughter with a gun, is like her fiery mother and Ferguson, a failed guerrilla fighter who is just an average father, made me almost cry. DiCaprio blends it with such immensely vulnerable wit and gawky timing, and I watched in awe as a non-biological father became the true father.
Finally, despite all its political assertions, issues, thrill, chaos, One Battle… becomes a father-and-daughter story that sends out a deep message. DiCaprio's character, with all his desperate antics and dark glasses that hide truly troubled eyes, resonates with deep empathy for the lost souls who were once violently vocal.
One Battle… is like a wake-up call for all of us who are tired of sitting on the fence and believe we have lost our choice. It’s a far less complex film than Anderson’s earlier There Will Be Blood, Phantom Thread or even the neo noir Inherent Vice. Here, he is far less abstract and far more mainstream.
Ferguson finally manages to rescue his daughter, but he actually ends up rescuing his old revolutionary past. As he fumbles with his mobile in his dark, crummy abode, trying to figure out how to switch on the light to take a selfie, Willa goes off in the rain to join a public demonstration and protest.
I am certain those who will read my long piece till the end are tired of big-screen nonsense because it’s too expensive. Trust me for once and go to a cinema hall to see this insanely thrilling and beautiful film because you will walk out like me, feeling highly excited, young and find your lost love for big-screen cinema.
