Written by: Aidan Srb
This year’s Oscars ceremony concluded with Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another winning the award for Best Picture, its sixth win of the night and the third for Anderson himself, who had already claimed Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. There have been plenty of Oscar winners that haven’t lived up to the prestigious title, but this year was, for me, a major exception: Anderson’s latest film is about as great as anything he’s ever made, and I’m glad that both he and the film are receiving the recognition they deserve.
The film opens with an extended prologue of sorts before jumping forward 16 years to begin the main narrative. We are first introduced to Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) while he is a member of a militant revolutionary group that calls itself the French 75. His relationship with fellow revolutionary Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) produces a child while they help the French 75 plant and set off bombs, free detained migrants, and make other such symbolic political statements. When Perfidia, who refuses to give up her revolutionary lifestyle even after the birth of her child, is caught during an armed bank robbery, she gives up the names of French 75 members to enter witness protection, forcing Bob to flee into hiding with his infant daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) while most of the French 75 are hunted down and killed.
The primary narrative picks up 16 years later, when Bob, now rarely sober and deeply paranoid, acts as a single father to a teenage Willa, who has learned to be quite independent to overcome Bob’s incompetence as a parent. Still, Bob clearly loves his daughter and does what he can to keep her safe, which includes some rather extreme cautionary measures. Willa dismisses these precautions as paranoid delusions until she is suddenly confronted with extreme danger when Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), who was primarily responsible for the demise of the French 75, targets her for reasons unknown to Bob.
Where One Battle After Another most succeeds is in the central father/daughter relationship between Bob and Willa, even though they actually share very little screen time together. DiCaprio’s performance as Bob is the strongest grounding force in the film, perfectly balancing some of the best comedic work of his career with a delicate touch of endearing emotional vulnerability. His moments of pathetically helpless frustration are as hilarious as they are deeply moving because the desperation behind them is so pure-hearted and, ultimately, selfless. Perfidia’s absence haunts every frame of the film after her early exit, and the fact that Bob is available to actively (try to) protect his daughter stands out in stark contrast as a result. The film raises questions about sacrifice and parenthood: Bob assumes the responsibility of caring for a child that he helped bring into the world, while Perfidia chooses her commitment to the revolution and then, ultimately, her own freedom above all else. Anderson is careful not to “judge” his characters in a moral sense, but he also isn’t looking to create perfect heroes; Bob and Perfidia are both flawed in their own ways, but both they and their circumstances are far too complicated for either of them, especially Bob, to be dismissed as inherently “bad people.” And while it’s true that the fallibility of individuals is a constant theme in this film, it’s also true that individual acts of courageous heroism have the potential to save the day — and they constantly do throughout the film.
The most unfortunate aspect of the narrative, and Anderson’s most prominent thematic interest, comes in the form of Willa’s involvement in this whole chain of events, as she ultimately is forced to fight a battle that she played no part in starting. Anderson has described this film as a kind of apology to his children, or what we might more broadly call an apology from one generation to the next, for leaving the world in such a disastrous state for them. In One Battle After Another, Bob and Perfidia and their entire generation “fail,” in a sense, to bring about the world that they set out to create — a better world. The French 75 fails miserably in its political goals; when the film makes its time jump after the prologue, we are directly told through voiceover narration that in those 16 years that had passed, “the world had changed very little.” Anderson covers a lot of political ground with the “Christmas Adventurers Club,” an elite secret society of white supremacists who hold a great deal of power in the United States. The inner workings of this group, and Lockjaw’s desperate attempts to join them, are both darkly humorous and deeply disturbing. Anderson suggests, without much subtlety, that white supremacy continues to run rampant in America’s halls of power, and Lockjaw’s authority to enforce it allows no room for resistance.
Willa, a biracial girl, the product of a revolution that ultimately failed, is forced to fend for herself in a world where she is viewed by some as a mistake that must be corrected — indeed, this is literally how Lockjaw views her when he realizes that she may actually be his biological daughter. She is forced into an unfair position by circumstances entirely out of her control, and there isn’t much anyone can do to help her — Bob’s heart is in it, but his body and mind aren’t really up to the task. And so the young generation is left to fight not only their own battles, but their parents’ battles as well; this is where Anderson’s “apology” comes in. But Willa, with her fighting spirit and pure heart, becomes a symbol of hope by the film’s ending, a call for a better world — the one that the next generation deserves. The film’s title suggests that the fight may be ongoing, with no end in sight; but as long as there is someone to keep the struggle alive, hope for a better future remains.
Featured Image Caption: Bob and Willa in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another.
