Paul Thomas Anderson - PUNCH DRUNK LOVE, THERE WILL BE BLOOD, THE MASTER, INHERENT VICE..... a master film-maker whose film I admire and adore. But ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER was a painful watch, impacted by who I am and the times we live in. As a woman of colour and second generation immigrant living in a place where lampposts are papered with St George's flags, I could not reconcile enjoying a comedy caper juxtaposed with a hyper-real depiction of undocumented migrants fearing for their lives in a sanctuary city. In the end, I spent much of the film wondering why all of the uniformly gushing reviews had not commented on this, or found it problematic. I felt sad about racism as depicted in this film and found in my daily life. And sad that every single mainstream film reviewer in the UK is white. Maybe in a decade, if liberal democracy wins, I will be able to watch this film on its own terms. But right now, it just feels like a white guy making a funny film using immigrant pain as a backdrop. Even worse, a hispanic saviour bailing out a white fuckwit. No. Just no.
The film is about an ex radical left terrorist (Leonardo Di Caprio) who, fifteen years later, is a stoner dad living under an alias with his teenage daughter (Chase Infiniti). His old white supremacist antagonist (Sean Penn) is trying to gain access to an elite group of racist vigilantes. In order to join he has to clean up his past, not least his sexual infatuation with the teenager's mother, a black terrorist called Perfidia Beverly Hills. So the racist kidnaps the daughter. There are a bunch of car chases and shoot outs. The end.
On a technical level, this is, of course, a superb film, and maybe even the film of the year. PTA and his DP Michael Bauman shoot the film in Vistavision, so it looks fantastic and deserves to be seen on the best screen you can find. PTA crafts not one but two truly unique and tense car chases - the first in a prologue that has a getaway car scythe through traffic centrally rather than going around the side onto pavements - the second using a rolling hilly landscape to obscure and reveal the cars chasing each other. And no-one unfurls his camera through an ever deeper set like PTA. There's a bravura set piece where we move from a storefront in a sanctuary city through a house and into an underground hideout where migrants are having to escape through a tunnel to a church. Impeccable film-making.
And then there's Jonny Greenwood's stunning score that moves from genre to genre, Greenwood often playing his own wide set of obscure musical instruments. At times I felt like the score was the only thing holding the film together. Kudos also to the production and costume designers who manage to deliberately confuse the viewer as to when the film is set. Are we in the 70s, when US domestic terrorism from anti-capitalist militants was at its height? Or is this film contemporary? The answer is both, and that's handled very elegantly.
The performances are more complex to review. Sean Penn is mesmerising as a white supremacist police officer but it's a performance that is deliberately cartoonish. I actually found his sidekick, played straight, far more terrifying. Leonardo Di Caprio is funny, but derivative, playing his character as Lebowski. Or maybe it's just lazy writing. Benicio Del Toro plays himself - affable, cool, lowkey hilarious. Regina Hall is stunning as an ex terrorist now trying to help out Di Caprio's teenage daughter. But it's like she's in a totally different film.
And this brings us into the inherent incoherence of the film. Half of it is played deadly straight and completely terrifies us. That's the film containing Regina Hall and the migrants and the military sidekick interrogating high school kids. That's a great film. That's the film I wanted. And then there's a comedy caper full of cartoonish characters that I ultimately did not give a shit about. Leonardo Di Caprio's character is caught in the middle of this incoherence. Funny yes. But do I care about him as a father? Do I invest in his relationship with daughter? No. Because genre is working to undermine him.
ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER has a running time of 166 minutes and is rated R. It is on global release.
