Paul Thomas Anderson’s 10th film, “One Battle After Another,” represents a shift in the director’s style. For the first time, Anderson has strayed from his usual cerebral, slow-burn style in favor of a more traditionally structured action blockbuster. While his previous films never broke $40 million in production costs, “One Battle” cost $130 million in production, and $70 million in advertising.
The film is a loose adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel “Vineland.” Like Anderson, Pynchon is known for his twisting plotlines and surreal depictions of American history, and Anderson is not new to adapting Pynchon’s work: “The Master” is a loose adaptation of Pynchon’s “V.,” and “Inherent Vice” is direct adaptation of Pynchon’s novel by the same name. Both Pynchon and Anderson tend to be very deliberate in their settings of their stories, and while “Vineland” is no different—the book is set in 1984, in lead up to Reagan’s reelection, and focuses on Zoyd Wheeler, a washed up ex-hippy formerly involved in the radicalism of 1960s counter culture—”One Battle” strayed from this trend and went for a contemporary setting.
The late 1960s were a high water mark for mass left-wing radicalism in America. The civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, and the mass rejection of traditional values encapsulated in the hippy phenomenon with its free love, psychedelia, and vague Marxist influences forecasted a major shift in the course of America. For the most part, this ended in failure. In December of 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. declared the next front of the civil rights movement to be a war on poverty, and in April of 1968, he was assassinated. From there, a campaign was conducted to whitewash his legacy, to erase his socialist tendencies, and to declare his movement finished.
The hippy movement, predominantly made up of the white middle class, never had the same level of organization as the civil rights movement, and was even more easily co-opted and crushed. Only the most radical wings remained dedicated to revolutionary action, but even these groups are generally criticized for being more dedicated to radical aesthetics than productive mass organization.
The Weather Underground was one such group, named after a lyric in Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” was formed by white college students and was known for their use of pipe bomb-based terrorism, though they made a deliberate choice to only target property and not people after three of their own were killed in an accidental explosion. Their methods were condemned roundly even by members of the extreme left, including the Maoist chairman of the Black Panther Party, Fred Hampton, who considered the Weathermen to be adventurists, a term used by Marxists to criticize individualist actions that have no connection to the mass movement. “We these people may be sincere but they’re misguided,” Hampton said in late 1969. “It’s nothing but child’s play.”
The novel contrasts the politics of ‘60s and ‘80s in a deliberate way, crafting a portrayal of both the amateur, failed revolution of the hippy movement, and the Reaganite neoliberalism which triumphed over it. The film, on the other hand, fits less neatly into American history. The bulk of the film follows a former member of the French 75—a fictional left-wing revolutionary organization which parallels the terroristic tactics of the Weather Underground—who has been forced into the alias of Bob Fergusson (the adaptation of Zoyd Wheeler, played by Leonardo DiCaprio) following a decisive government crackdown on the organization. In choosing to set the film in 2025 instead of 1984, there is a sort of out-of-time feeling when it comes to the placement of the French 75. Until very recent events, political violence from the left has been practically non-existent since the ‘70s, and so the French 75’s supposed reign of terror in the mid 2000s feels inauthentic in a way that is uncharacteristic for Anderson’s films.
But the choice makes sense: one of the most talked-about features of “One Battle After Another” is its depiction of current American politics. As told by Paul Thomas Anderson, fascism isn’t an approaching threat; it’s already here. In the film we see colluding nationalistic elites, false flag fire bombings, and extra-judicial killings committed by the State—all in the name of national security. And, what is most interesting, there is little special attention given to these events. They’re not portrayed as revelations, but as accepted facts.
At first, the viewer might find it absurd that Colonel Lockjaw, the primary antagonist of the film, could assassinate two American citizens without any charges, trial, or sentencing, but upon examining the relevant history, this is more in-line with the American State than one might think. Fred Hampton, the previously mentioned chairman of the Black Panther Party, was drugged by a police informant and then murdered in his sleep by officers in late 1969. Many of those close to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., including those on the balcony with him at the time of his assassination doubt the official narrative of his killing and instead claim government involvement.
And the character of Colonel Lockjaw, in many ways, parallels Hannah Arendt’s conception of totalitarianism. In her academically renowned 1951 work “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” a key theme is the State crossing the boundaries of constitutional law and mobilizing society to become self-policing. According to Arendt, the totalitarian state regulates not just action, but individuality through an embedding in the personal lives of its subjects.
In Pynchon’s original novel, the federal government is able to easily undermine the hippy movement by bribing its participants to inform on themselves. “One Battle After Another” takes this further, as is appropriate with its more contemporary setting. In the first act of the film Lockjaw, personifying Arendt’s totalitarian state, finds himself personally embedded in the lives of the members of the French 75, stalking them, standing in line with them at the supermarket, and, as you’ll know if you’ve seen the film, much more. And this personal position in their lives enables him to more or less obliterate the movement from within.
But Anderson is not entirely pessimistic. This film is, above all else, an action blockbuster, and therefore designed to be a crowd-pleaser, and the last thing Americans want in this current political moment is a somber resignation from any hope of successful resistance. As the film portrays it, the State’s repression becomes a self-consuming contradiction; what was once Lockjaw’s greatest asset becomes his downfall.
“One Battle After Another” delivers a (mostly) consistent portrayal of American radicalism, both by the State and against it, wrapped in the package of a fast paced action blockbuster. Although it wasn’t the focus of this review, the film continues Anderson’s tradition of beautiful cinematography (directed by Michael Bauman), a driving soundtrack (scored by Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood), and outstanding performances (Sean Penn’s portrayal of Lockjaw especially). It balances action set-pieces with Hitchcock-esque thriller sequences and a sense of humor in order to deliver its themes to a broad audience.
A few weeks after its release, “One Battle” failed to deliver its box office expectations. While the film has made more than its production costs in ticket sales, between the cut the theaters get, Leonardo DiCaprio’s personal cut, and marketing costs, the film would need around $300 million in order to break even for Warner Brothers. In spite of this, the film has received wide acclaim, both from critics and audiences, and has set itself up for a long-lasting legacy in the film industry—something it entirely deserves.
