The radical hope of “One Battle After Another”
Contains Spoilers
Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another may be the most important American film made this year. I will go on a step further and say it’s the most relevant American film of the 2020s.
First, it is rare to see films engaging with the contemporary moment. Hollywood productions are stacked with biopics, historical dramas, and sequels/prequels. Second, there is often a tension between politically serious films and the aesthetics of mass cinema.
With One Battle After Another, Paul Thomas Anderson breaks these archetypes masterfully and decisively. One Battle After Another is action-packed, funny, intelligent, and revolutionary – both in its form and content. It’s a complete entertainment package. It’s a family movie. It’s artistic. It’s wholesome. It’s critical. And most importantly, it’s hopeful. This is what films should be doing: building mass audiences and engaging with them about the world we live in.
The film centres around Ghetto Pat Calhoun (Leonardo di Caprio), who used to be part of an underground far-left group called the French 75, composed of a small number of vigilantes who would free migrants from detention centres along the Mexico-U.S. border. The French 75’s tactics ranged from blowing up electrical grids using home-made explosives to robbing banks to fund their guns and munitions.
Pat falls in love with his French 75 comrade Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) and they have a daughter together. Perfidia is also on the side engaging in a dangerous sexual relationship with Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn) who is obsessed with razing the French 75 and any left-wing organizing to the ground. In almost three hours of adrenaline-driven storytelling, panic-struck original score by Johnny Greenwood, and dizzying, chaotic camera work, we see Anderson explore a key question of our times: what does American fascism look like and how do we fight it as a collective?
An American brand of fascism
One Battle After Another is clear about who the enemy is – the billionaires who run America. In a heavy handed satirical tone, the movie shows a close-knit group of white supremacists called the Christmas Adventurers Club (CAC). Its members are not working class Trump-voters or the victims of de-industrialization in the Rust Belt. Christmas Adventurers Club is made up of C-suite executives, billionaires, politicians, and military officials.
The CAC is about racial purity in America, and they especially hate Black folks and Mexicans. But when Steven J. Lockjaw does a raid to apprehend undocumented migrants in Sacramento under the pretext of “cocaine in tacos,” the CAC takes issue with it. Turns out Chicken Licken Frozen Food, owned by one of the members of Christmas Adventurers Club, got targeted during the raid and it needs undocumented migrant labour to continue business.
This is especially on brand for America, a country built on slave labour and currently running on migrant labour that imagines itself as a white-Christian nation-state. Anderson brings this Americana to everything he shoots and he does that with style. From re-wired Motorola phones to Patagonia vests on the Christmas Adventurers, to American muscle cars, the message is clear – the brands maketh the country.
And underneath these brands lies the sinister truth that is exploitation. Anderson doesn’t shy away from images of children in cages, migrants sleeping in crowded housing, and a militarized police state ready to wreak havoc on its own people. There are also no subtitles for any of the Spanish spoken in the film. Because that’s what America sounds like. In this movie, he crafts a language for American films that feels grounded and timely.
Fault lines of ultra leftism and a case for mass politics
This movie is about strategies and tactics – on both sides of the political spectrum. For Christmas Adventure Club, security culture maintains their racial purity by keeping membership numbers small and limited to only those with immense financial and political power. Whenever they undertake a high-risk action, such as murder, they get away with it.
On the other hand, small numbers, security culture, and high-risk agitation leave French 75 and the broader movement vulnerable to brutal crackdown by the state and complete demobilization. There are two particular instances in the movie that explore this well.
First is the scene where Pat is trying to get coordinates of his daughter from his former organization over a hotline. Pat cannot for the life of him remember the password. Time is running out. And the person on the other side of the hotline would not budge no matter how urgent the matter. The silliness of this scene is emblematic of a revolutionary practice learned by rote that over-emphasises the aesthetics of being a radical instead of the timeliness of action.
The second instance is when huge swaths of people are rallying against the raids on undocumented migrants on the streets of California. Lockjaw sends in agitators dressed as protestors in all black clothes with their faces covered. They throw molotov cocktails at the police and provide the police with an opportunity to strike back with tear gas and rubber bullets. This type of high-risk agitation could very well be something French 75 would have done in the past. But in this moment, it gives cover for the state to quell the protest by force.
Throughout the movie, when revolutionaries act as individuals or in their own interest, they get in trouble. Not only do these individuals put themselves at risk, but also their families and communities. It shows the limitations of groups like French 75 who either get thwarted by the state completely or get demobilized. di Caprio’s character, for example, ends up being a paranoid, washed-up revolutionary, checked out from any political activity all together. He is now a “weed and alcohol lover” watching Battle of Algiers, another movie about strategies and tactics, to reminisce about his good old revolutionary days.
In fact, the most effective organizing in the movie is done by people not identifying as revolutionaries at all. Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro) is a karate teacher who we later find out is a community leader. He has been providing shelter and support to undocumented migrants and built an entire network of workers in strategic workplaces, such as hospitals, churches, convenience stores, and even detention centres. This is what community organizing is able to achieve at its peak. When the raids begin, it is his network that is able to actually build a resistance.
At the centrality of these contrasting depictions is the idea that movements grow at the speed of trust. When individuals do not trust their comrades, such as when Pat’s daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) lies about her cellphone, they put everyone at risk. But when individuals trust even strangers in their community, like when Bob (Pat) trusts his daughter’s karate teacher, good things can happen. One Battle After Another makes a strong case for this type of good faith organizing that builds solidarities with the widest layers possible.
Looking towards a better future
Many are debating which tradition of the left does Paul Thomas Anderson actually endorse with this movie. I think that debate misses a key conclusion altogether. The film treats its characters with empathy despite the difference in strategies and tactics. The film’s primary concern is with building hope for a future.
Sergio does not abandon Bob (Pat) and Willa just because the entire city is now a target due to Bob’s past political activities from two decades ago. He knows that the state and Christmas Adventurers Club are the enemies so he helps Bob out in good faith. French 75 may have combusted within the narrative, but the remaining members come together to rescue Willa in a moment of need. The undercover agitator may have put that one rally in harm’s way but we learn in the last scene that the resistance movement against these raids have actually spread across more cities.
The point is, the struggle continues.
This conclusion is most poignant in the pivotal car chase scene near the end of the movie. Willa is running away from her captors in a Dodge Charger while being followed by one of the Christmas Adventurers in a Ford Mustang. The two American muscle cars chasing on rolling hills of California’s desert is a delicious cinematic scene, nothing short of a technical masterpiece. The audience is completely hypnotized by the camera going up and down the hills. The cars come in and out of view, invoking a physical sensation of being on a roller coaster. The roads are endless. The Mustang is stronger than the Dodge so it’s catching up. Willa needs to take action – and she does. She stops her car at the top of the hill, which the Mustang wouldn’t see because of the hills and crashes right into it.
The imagery of the long, never ending road reminded me of an article Spring magazine had published a few years ago called “Socialism’s long hauler”. This is what the long haul looks like. Endless ups and down, constantly being chased by a more powerful machine, but the only way to win is to take action.
And maybe when your chosen family appears (because by now we know Pat is not Willa’s biological father) in a Nissan Tsuru, which is an important Japanese car popular in Mexico, go for a warm embrace!
One Battle After Another feels like a pensive letter from a generation that is asking itself if they could have done things differently. And by reflecting as such, it’s giving the new generation an opportunity to think what they can do now to build a different future all together. After all, those who have dabbled in revolutionary practice know very well that revolutions are not one-off events. Sometimes, it’s one battle after another.
