Joseph Moser
After making five consecutive period films, Paul Thomas Anderson turns his attention to our seething, roiling, punishing present, and he captures the zeitgeist with a vengeance. From the opening seconds of “One Battle After Another,” I was mesmerized and electrified by Anderson’s brilliant writing and images, Jonny Greenwood’s propulsive score, and the commanding performances of phenomenal actors. There is very little in Anderson’s previous work that can prepare viewers for the experience of this film, and that’s a great thing.
“One Battle After Another” is playing in Montpelier at the Savoy Theater starting Oct. 17, and at the Capital Theater through Oct. 23.
Filmed mostly in the first half of 2024 in California and El Paso, “One Battle After Another” boldly foregrounds the militarization and ICEification of our society and culture in a way that is so eerily timely that it seems Anderson drew an inside straight flush with this fall 2025 release. The movie is gut-wrenching, poignant, gritty, and funny. It’s like “No Country for Old Men” meets “The Big Lebowski” meets “The Battle of Algiers” (referenced in the film) with dashes of “Dog Day Afternoon” and Anderson’s own “Inherent Vice” thrown into the scintillating cinematic stew.
The movie’s conflict is propelled by extremes. Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti), find themselves at the center of a mostly covert war between a left-wing terror organization known as the French 75 (of which Bob is a former member) and ultraconservatives in the government and private sector. With help from old associates and new friends, Bob and Willa go on the run, struggling to survive and reunite.
“One Battle” confronts what is happening right now at our borders and in American cities and towns, depicting brutal repression of immigrants and people of color. It also portrays everyday people acting with dignity and fortitude in the face of this systemic dehumanization. Willa, who is part African American, and Bob are both aided in their harrowing journeys by people of color; when Bob apologizes to Willa’s sensei Sergio (a never-better Benicio Del Toro) for bringing trouble to his door, Sergio’s reply epitomizes the movie’s theme of solidarity: “Tranquilo, Bob. We’ve been laid siege for hundreds of years. You did nothing wrong.” Sergio models equanimity for the frequently befuddled Bob, who, in true Lebowski fashion, spends half the film darting from place to place in his bathrobe.
In addition, though, the film shows the past breathing down the neck of the present. In many scenes, characters are looking over their shoulders or in rearview mirrors — not because they’re paranoid, but because someone really is bearing down on them with an old score to settle. Bob and Willa’s adversaries include Steven Lockjaw, played by Sean Penn as a repellent and insecure but not utterly inhuman soldier, a man who has been hunting down immigrants and dissidents for decades. Furthermore, both Bob and Willa are compelled to revisit their complicated relationship with Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), Willa’s mother and Bob’s former partner in love and crime/revolution. They also cross paths with the haunted Deandra (Regina Hall), who carries on the revolutionary struggle but seems to intuit that her time is short. Penn, Taylor, and Hall all give riveting performances, and so does newcomer James Raterman as Danvers, a chillingly shrewd interrogator working under Lockjaw.
In terms of character development, however, the two most dynamic figures in the film are Willa and the bounty hunter Avanti (Eric Schweig). Willa endures an exceedingly harsh coming-of-age ordeal and must mature fast to cope. In a recent interview, Anderson attests that he waited over five years to find the right actor to play Willa, and he certainly struck gold with Infiniti, who effectively embodies strength, vulnerability, resolution, and confusion in her movie debut. As for Avanti, events surrounding this hired gun lead him to introspection and then drastic measures to recover his integrity; Schweig speaks little but brilliantly conveys his character’s inner turmoil almost entirely through expressions and body language.
In his sixth collaboration with Anderson, Jonny Greenwood (of Radiohead) delivers a masterly score that ranges from swelling strings to jazzy piano to Mexican-style guitar. His music helps viewers navigate the film’s frequent shifts in tone, as do the classic rock songs that fill out the memorable soundtrack. The final music cue before the end credits felt to me like a fist raised in solidarity to defy all the neofascist fist-raisers in this country, whether they be masked or unmasked.
With “One Battle,” Anderson has taken an ambitious step forward as an artist. He tells an American story on a vast urban and desert canvas, delving into the darkest places in this nation’s soul with insight, humor, and profound feeling. He will likely win his first Oscar (or two or three) for this movie, but more significantly, he’s given us a sublime cultural touchstone and a glimmer of hope for the future of our country.
