Quick plot synopsis

“One Battle After Another,” written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, follows Leonardo Dicaprio’s character Bob Fergusson as he attempts to protect his daughter, Willa, from Colonel Lockjaw, who is hunting them down due to her mother and Bob’s previous work in rebel group the French 75. Bob and Willa have been hiding from the government over the last 16 years in Baktan Cross, California, an area which becomes compromised once Lockjaw finds out their location. Surviving ex-members of the French 75 come back together to help save Bob and Willa.  

A Never-ending fight filled with waves and chords

What locks you into this plot is the tense action that just keeps going and going – to the point where scenes don’t feel like they even stop being one continuous action scene. It weaves all these events together into a constant chase with minimal breaks to catch your breath. When coming out of the theater, it’s hard to talk to others about the movie without mentioning how beautiful this movie looks. In most Paul Thomas Anderson films, you can rely on beautiful cinematography. 

One Battle After Another takes Thomas’ previous work to a different level with the large desert expanses much of the movie takes place in. One scene in particular works purely off of how it’s shot. In a car chase near the end of the movie, the action isn’t played with guns or weapons; it’s played with the waves of the desert roads. It’s the visible tension that is shown on the people in the cars and what the hills let us see as they dip down and rise back up. That scene always comes up in conversation after I watch the film with other people, to a point where that scene will most likely go down in cinema history. 

All of these elements are backed up by a fantastic score by Jonny Greenwood. The music is made up of discordant strings, piano keys and drums that create an overbearing feeling of suspense as everything is happening with the characters. Scenes that might already seem action packed are paired with songs that keep driving them even when it seems like they’re at their breaking point. Everything here comes together to make the movie feel like a steaming train that isn’t slowing down, even when you think your stop is coming up. Once this movie gets you, you can’t let go.

Why should you care about seeing this movie?

What makes any of the plot and action interesting is why any of it happens in the first place. 

Sure you could chalk the reason up to the characters previously being in an extreme rebel group and the government finds that compromising to their ideals. But the movie doesn’t hold back from the true intentions that lie beneath hostile extractions. 

One major point of interest between Perfiddia and Lockjaw is a secret relationship they had with each other, one that was later exploited to sell out the whereabouts of most of the members of the French 75. It’s what caused Bob and Willa to go on the run and for Lockjaw to win a medal of honor. 

His work would be recognized 16 years later when he’d be asked to join the group “The Christmas Adventurers Club.” He was then asked by one of the high ranking members (a cisgender, rich white male) things like, “Have you ever engaged in an interracial relationship,” and “Have you ever consulted a mental health professional?” The questions they ask are particularly insidious and can be tied to racist and negative stigmas against getting help. 

The “bad” guys in One Battle After Another are simply the government as a whole, with lackeys who follow in their footsteps to benefit from their systems. When Lockjaw plans to send an army into Baktan Cross to capture Willa and Bob, he tells the commanding officers to make it about “drugs and tacos.” There are clear negative Hispanic stereotypes insinuated in the idea it would be easy to believe there’s a massive undercover drug syndicate in the largely Spanish-populated area that Bob and Willa lived in. 

The motivations for the characters against revolutionaries, portrayed as old white men, are that they are against change, difference and concepts they don’t understand. In America, what majority is currently ruling over our government establishments? The very same that have so much power in the film. To drive home this point, about 74 percent of Congressional representatives are White, according to numbers reported by Pew Research Center in January. In March, they reported the average age in the House of Representatives is 57.5 years old and 64.7 in the Senate.

A majority of America’s decision makers and speakers are older than the people that they’re supposed to speak for, including my generation. Outdated ways of thinking is what One Battle After Another directly confronts with characters like Lockjaw and the Christmas Adventurers. 

Bob and Willa represent a sort of distraught hope of making a change for the future, with Bob being a washed up revolutionary of the past and passing the spirit of change onto Willa. Willa is also a mixed-race child which brings home the point of a different hopeful future for everyone in America. If anything, I’m surprised this movie has received so much positive attention because of how obvious it makes its points against conservative and Nazi ideologies. 

In a country where race and gender are constantly attacked, One Battle After Another takes a strong stance against what America has been, and has become, in recent years.

This is a movie that feels incredibly necessary at a time like now. When hateful rhetoric, and its enforcement, is accepted and spreads through our government and towns, action must be taken. They want to kill the color from people’s skin. They want to push out and deport anyone who doesn’t look like them. They care for the preservation of their status rather than caring for society as a whole. Revolution against a society that has been infected like such is painful and tedious, and that’s what One Battle After Another displays in its beautiful vision. It’s truly one battle, after another. A road of ups and downs that seems to have no end in sight.

Though it may have taken Paul Thomas Anderson 20 years to write this, this is as relevant as any time where a corrupt government rules. A movie that will be remembered in relation to the past, the present and the future. That’s something special.