Released: 25th September
Seen: 21st December
As the year draws to a close, the time is soon approaching when we’re going to learn what the big awards contenders are. The ones that will sweep the upcoming ceremonies that will go down in history as one of the few films every year to get the title of “Oscar-nominated”. It’s always a little hard to guess exactly who the nominees are, hence why every single year there are articles printed about a couple of major snubs and surprises that no one saw coming. Other films, however, are pretty much guaranteed to be in the conversation from the second they turn up on the scene, and one such film that’s absolutely dominated any discussion about upcoming awards is the Paul Thomas Anderson film One Battle After Another, and it’s not very hard to see why.
One Battle After Another sides with members of the anti-fascist group known as the French 75. The bombs expert Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) has a bit of a relationship with fellow member Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), which complicates things while they take part in revolutionary acts to try and help detained migrants from a detention centre. At one point, Perfidia has an illicit affair with Colonel Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn), which results in a pregnancy and the birth of Willa (Chase Infiniti). Cut to several years later, Perfidia is in hiding after ratting on several members of the French 75, Lockjaw is trying to join a group of white supremacists known as the Christmas Adventurers, Bob is high out of his mind, and Willa just wants a normal childhood. So when shit goes down, Bob has to try and remember his training from back when he was in the French 75 so he can find his daughter and hopefully keep her away from the fascists trying to kill her.
The choice that One Battle After Another makes to be pointedly political in this current climate feels almost refreshing. Someone willing to actually take the leap and give us a film that really reflects modern-day issues and takes a pointed stance (That stance being “Fuck white supremacists, they can fucking rot”) is worth a lot of praise just on its own. While it never crosses the line into being straight-up preachy, there is a point of view that’s unavoidable and the film never shies away from it. This is an anti-fascist work of art, a film that asks you to side with a left-wing extremist group and makes the enemy basically ICE agents who are being honest about their racism and it’s genuinely a fun time. Obviously, if you completely disagree with the politics involved (Which… just saying, being against Anti-fascism is a little odd since that means siding with fascists) then this might be offensive to you but really, you’re missing out on something kind of fascinating.
A large part of why One Battle After Another works at all is that every character is incredibly well defined from the instant you meet them. It takes about 3 lines of dialogue before you know just what kind of person you’re dealing with, and watching them being let loose in this wild scenario that’s been set up. They’re not only well defined, but they feel complete, there’s complexities there. Lockjaw is a pretty horrific racist who wants to rise up the ladder, but you can see little moments where he doubts himself and it makes him more interesting. Bob is trying to be on the right side and support people who fight for what he believes in, but he’s also so completely fucked up on drugs that he’s unreliable. Watching these complex characters bounce off each other gives the film the focus it needs to really work… and boy, it needed a lot of focus.
The problem that One Battle After Another has is that its plot feels a little meandering at times. At over two and a half hours, that’s kind of inevitable but way too many times it just felt like they were taking detours just for the sake of killing time, there was one point where it feels like there’s a natural conclusion to the film and there’s still a solid half hour to go. While I’m not about to claim that the entire time spent in those detours was boring, they still made some parts of the film drag on which in turn made it a little harder to keep track of everything, with so many moving parts and major characters the last thing you want is to have the audience drifting off and it was hard not to do that at times because of how slow some moments were.
When One Battle After Another picks up the pace however, it’s incredible. The big action sequences that this film revels in are just glorious fun, a lot of big car chases and one particularly fun bank heist just command your attention and propel every character with so much energy behind them. It almost feels like the old classic action scenes where you knew everything was done practically, someone really drove that car off the edge of that road and found a way to survive it. While I can’t confirm if all the stunts were real, they certainly looked real. There’s a real tactile feeling to everything, like this film was made a couple of decades ago and someone went and cleaned up the negative to unleash it now. It’s also a little sad that feeling timeless means that a story about people fighting against fascists trying to deport people is a timeless story, but it’s still good.
One Battle After Another is an undeniably great film that is probably going to piss off some people who, for some reason, don’t like it when you revel in bad things happening to white supremacists but for everyone else it’s going to be a good time. There’s going to be a few moments where you need to power through but they’re worth it for the fascinating characters and some truly kickass action scenes. It makes sense that this is one of the awards darlings this season, and at least this awards darling is actually really good.
Movie Meister Reviews 