‘One battle after another’ is an urgently shocking epic; Read the criticism
One battle after anotherof Paul Thomas AndersonIt is exciting, clumsy and seriously serious on a big screen – a “no” to complacency, oppression, tyranny. It is a carnival epic about good and evil, violence and power, inalienable rights and the struggle against injustice; It is also a love story. The film speaks of the failures of the past and the present, but insists on the promise of the future. It is brilliantly directed, but what makes him exciting is that he gets involved with his moment as few American fiction films do. It seems urgently shocking. It is also funny to the point of making you laugh loudly, even when the laughs tremble with anger.
One battle after another draw the misadventures of a glorious fool, Bob Ferguson – lived by a Leonardo DiCaprio that rises completely to the buffet occasion -a revolutionary soldier transformed into a hunted terrorist and a dedicated single father. Set mainly in the present, the story takes off about 16 years earlier, during Bob’s explosive term on French 75, a radical group (presumably fake!) That shares its name with a cannon and a cocktail that the Humphrey Bogart nightclub serves in Casablanca. The group’s beliefs are quite direct – equality, freedom – although vacancies in the details, and Anderson does not explain his revolutionary ideology. Like his characters, he usually prefers to put the theory into action.
The fulcrum of the story is the love between Bob and Perfidia Beverly Hills (an electrifying Teyana Taylor), Charismatic Member of French 75. Brave and uncompromising, Perfidia cuts the world as a knife. Early on, Bob eagerly follows his command during the group’s attack on a migrant detention center where, in the night healing, they and the other insurgents disarm the military guards and free a multitude of men, women, and children. This is also where Perfidia first finds her nemesis, Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (a great Sean Penn), whom she easily dominates with a fist gun and an unusual command: she orders the Sitting Lockjaw to completely rise up a guideline that he obeys with an erection that comically arms a tent on his pants.
It is an crucial moment and an absurd scene, which Anderson explores as ridiculous as the erection of the bass so that it stands out in the scene, emphasizing Lockjaw’s impotence before Perfidia. He is no longer in control of the detainees or his own body, and certainly is not in control of it. It actually perfidated Lockjaw, which instigates a crazy and wicked desire for it. By forcing Lockjaw to obey, she challenged a power regime that dates back to the violent sexual exploitation of black women enslaved by white men, and that the villains of the film want to keep. Lockjaw will spend the rest of the movie trying to reaffirm its supremacy.
One battle after another was inspired by VinelandThomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel, in which Anderson was freely based on his unique purposes. The novel opens in 1984, the year Ronald Reagan won his second term as president and in the wake of the “Nixonian repression.” Time has advanced to its comically appointed post-year-old survivors (Anderson invents his own caricatures). Although “the staff has changed, repression continued, growing wider, deeper and less visible,” says one character. (In a 2015 interview with novelist Steve Erickson that took place at Trump Tower, Anderson talked about Vineland And he said he would adapt “or just steal a lot” from Pynchon’s book.)
Leonardo DiCaprio is a former revolutionary in ‘One Battle after another’, a new movie by Paul Thomas Anderson Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures/disclosure
Anderson does not name the oxen in One battle after anotherand I don’t remember listening to any character mentioning current politicians. Even so, it is around 2009, the year in which Barack Obama’s first term began, which French 75 takes the detention center – during a propellantly staged and filmed sequence, which establishes the exalted tone and the fast pace. Group members are euphoric with the attack, as excited about their success as Lockjaw is by Perfidia. “Long live the revolution!“Bob screams as they escape, a war shout that resonates as he and perfids come together, steal benches, have a daughter, separate and flee. Everything collapses, and Bob ends up derives in a mist of cannabis.
Anderson rarely relieves the pressure in One battle after anotherAlthough it decreases a little when history changes to the present. Having gone to the clandestinity years earlier, Bob now lives with his daughter, Willa (the rookie Chase Infiniti), in a house in northern California (of course), this land of sequoias, marijuana and paranoia. There, he drinks a lot of alcohol and smokes a lot of marijuana – smoke hangs around his permanently confused face, with his tiny ponytail hanging flaucly as an emblem of his helplessness. His ardor is gone, just like Eperfidia, who left him a long time ago. To spend time, he watches the 1966 movie by Gillo Pontecorvo, The Battle of Algiers -About Algeria’s struggle for independence.
It is easy to laugh at Bob, but there is a pathetic in its personal and generational failures. Anderson is not interested in requesting the viewer’s piety, however (that would be a cheap trick), and both the character and physically grand performance of DiCaprio – is a force of comic nature – prevent you from softening with Bob. You watch the character, but never deeply get into your head, partly because Bob never does that either. He is an extremely unconscious man who is remarkably only driven to act against oppression when it personally affects him, which happens when Lockjaw returns, with tightly intact posture. (Penn’s walk suggests that the rod is firmly planted in the character’s ass.)
Teyana Taylor and Sean Penn on the scene of ‘one battle after another’ Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures / disclosure
What redeem Bob is love: his for Willa and hers for him. This love illuminates the rest of the movie as a lighthouse. He joined father and daughter, creating a two conspiracy. He helped make Willa who she is, and probably prevented Bob from disappearing completely. Love is what forces him to leave his refuge and entropy when Lockjaw – now supported by a dark group of Christian white supremacists called Christmas Adventurers – Violently returns to the scene, endangering Willa. The film takes another direction as Bob and Willa run away from Lockjaw, fragmenting the story in separate sections that eventually converge. Things then get even more complicated and frightening.
Anderson’s gift to put many pieces at stake is fully present in One battle after anotherincluding your superb cast. Supporting actors include Regina Hall as Deandra, one of the originals of French 75, and Benicio Del Toro as Sensei Sergio St. Carlos, a martial arts instructor who helps to command an underground railway for migrants. In a cunning cast choice, Tony Goldwyn – a TV series star Scandal – appears as one of the leaders of the Christmas Adventurers Club. In that series, which began to be aired in 2012, the white president (Goldwyn) is having a passionate case with the black crisis management expert, lived by Kerry Washington, a romantic fantasy that often seemed a lot like his ostensibly post-racial moment.
One battle after another It offers an imaginary world, although one that, despite all the absurd names and fantasy flights, looks a lot like the real. Not everything fits perfectly in the movie, which only strengthens its realism; After watching him twice, I am still searching his ideas and images, still thinking about power, race, and sex, and if he actually receives what he deserves, while continuing to taste the emotion that the movie produces. There are few filmmakers active today that they are as skillful as Anderson, and even less that they could – with the image of a pregnant black revolutionary firing a machine gun – creating a cry of the heart that is also a crystallizing image of resistance. It’s a cry to keep, wild and exciting, and as American as red, white and blue.
This article was originally published in The New York Times.
Hi! I’m Renato Lopes, an electric vehicle enthusiast and the creator of this blog dedicated to the future of clean, smart, and sustainable mobility. My mission is to share accurate information, honest reviews, and practical tips about electric cars—from new EV releases and battery innovations to charging solutions and green driving habits. Whether you’re an EV owner, a curious reader, or someone planning to make the switch, this space was made for you.
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