One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025

There Will Be Blood is the kind of American epic we need(ed) in the twenty-first century. Its a picture of the black heart of an new iteration of American, in its infancy. It's a portrait of the cannibalistic self obsession at the heart of American empire during the opening of the twentieth century, understood the horrifying absurdity and portrayed it honestly, with a clear eye.

I think whether the visual cues calling back to the Western vistas is an intentional comment on American self mythology or just a filmmaker's indulgence of his desire to be associated with that style of filmmaking through an attempted contribution to it, is a moot point. Whether this is believable may deepen some audience appreciation for it, but without it, I still find the film compelling, insightful, and likely the best example of revelatory filmmaking on the subject of bottomless greed this century has yet produced.

Licorice Pizza was disappointing because Paul Thomas Anderson seemed to be sliding into the same kind of nostalgia filled coma contributing to the ability to build American self mythology in a way that isn't negligible. The draw of that sense of nostalgia can grow with age. Believing it to be a tribute to its particular period or a tribute to the experience of youth, could lead to more charitable feelings toward it. It's also likely this is Anderson's attempt to contribute to the tradition of coming of age films out of sincere love and appreciation. I can see why those with more charitable feelings for this variety of nostalgia could appreciate it, but it's a variety of nostalgia I associate with too many of our more pernicious problems.

One Battle After Another has been one of the year's most talked about and critically lauded films. Truth be told, if Licorice Pizza hadn't left such a bad taste in my mouth, I would likely have felt more urgency to see it sooner.

One Battle After Another is as technically assured and skillful as has come to be expected of Anderson. There is less attention called to the virtuosity of the cinematography and staging, than in something like There Will Be Blood, but again, calling attention to that virtuosity is part of the history of films Anderson was engaging with in that film. Another part of the skill at work in One Battle After Another is the synthesis of the different varieties of films influencing it. It is rare and singular in how well it does this. Genre mashups are nothing new, but One Battle After Another doesn't feel like an intentional experiment in mixing genres, the way the majority of films that meet that description do. It feels like an organic confluence of influences, necessitating its own form.

It's two hour and forty-one minute run time is earned through its invention, and the degree it does not at all feel like a two hour and forty-one minute run time. This is a fleet footed movie, and it's not slowing down long for errant audience members to catch up.

It's also true every member of the cast is giving performances as good or better than any of their previous work. Whatever criticisms can be lodged against Anderson as a filmmaker and a force in the industry as one of its most celebrated directors, however it is he participates in the relationship to actors contributes to a filmography full of impressive performances, sometimes revealing aspects of those actors capabilities previously unseen.

There is a way to read this film as Anderson talking to other storytellers, other filmmakers most specifically. It bears a parallel to There Will Be Blood in two men locked in a battle of wills. DiCaprio's Bob and Penn's Lockjaw are the least interesting characters in a film populated with vibrant, interesting characters of different ethnicities, gender presentations, and the women of color are (with one notable exception) the most interesting characters in the film. The performances embodying these characters is interesting. It would be difficult to say beyond certainty Leonardo DiCaprio or Sean Penn have given better performances in any of their other work. As for the shape of who those characters, are outside of those performances, along with the Christmas Adventurers Club, they are as close to flat stereotypes the film has.

Teyana Taylor projects a character so compelling, she hangs over the last half of the film without needing to be on screen. Regina Hall's Deandra and Chase Infiniti's Willa could easily carry their own films as more interesting protagonists. The single male character that has anything like their resonance in the film is Benecio del Toro as Sensei Sergio St. Carlos. He continues to be a character actor with a leading man's charisma, that ability to somehow create magnetism and be compelling, no matter what character he's playing. Along with these examples in this film, Anderson's filmography shows he understands how to craft interesting, dynamic characters, so the evidence suggests it isn't a mistake that Bob, Lockjaw and the Christmas Adventurer's Club are the most cliché, stereotypical of the characters we meet.

Is this part of this film a comment on the warring factions of white American masculinity? Is it commenting on the catastrophe that war is for the people who share a society with it? Is Anderson using a Kubrickian sense of satire in the way he presents every white male character in the film? Is it commenting on the need for old white dudes who have calcified themselves into stereotypes to get the hell out of the way so the next generations can have their turn at shaping the future, with their ability to embrace a broader spectrum of what humanity is? Is it saying the best we can do for the future is to love that next generation, to the best of our flawed ability and show up for them, even when we are calcified old white dudes? Is Anderson saying to other filmmakers and storytellers that the same old cliché white guy characters need to take a step back so the more interesting, more diverse characters just waiting for their own narratives to be told can step in front?

If that's what this film is, I've never seen anything quite like it, and it deserves every award it's likely to be nominated for.

It could also be that it's a clumsy example of another white male director not seeing all of these things as inherent in what he's doing and these two making a sincere but empty attempt to refer to multiculturalism. It could also be possible he doesn't see that the battlegrounds for this war are the bodies of Black and Brown people, and doesn't see how his film presents two white men obsessed with the possession of a Black woman and her daughter, whom this world recognizes as Black and/or a woman of color, and treats them as the background for white men's obsessions. None of that is helped by the fact that his two leading men's private lives have caused no shortage of speculation about their attitudes toward women.

I'm not completely sure which of these films One Battle After Another is. My affinity for There Will Be Blood makes me want to believe it's the former. But my antipathy for Licorice Pizza makes it impossible to write off that it's the latter. The truth is probably somewhere in between.

In the sense of the audience experience of the technical aspect of the filmmaking, One Battle After Another succeeded in carrying me through, getting me invested in its characters and their fates. In the overall sense of the storytelling, the narrative it builds and brings to a conclusion, I'm honestly not sure what to think.

Whether someone thinks making clear those intentions is a requirement to make a film successful or whether it is valid that any art that motivates us as an audience to continue asking questions like this is successful, will likely have some bearing on how audiences feel individually.