ONE FUCK-YOU AFTER ANOTHER
Let me start by telling you how progressive I am.
So. Fucking. Progressive.
I mean, I’m a straight white male American, but don’t hold it
against me, har-har. Yet despite possibly the biggest demographic homecourt advantage
in human history, like you I scroll in horror at the ease with which fascists
have overrun the gates. I go to No Kings, I donate to socialist campaigns, my
charity of choice is Feeding America, I volunteer at a food bank, and oh, fuck,
now that I’m at the end of the list it doesn’t feel like a lot. But it’s
important to my self-image that I believe my heart is in the right
place. For God’s sake, I even subscribe to Hellworld.
So when my favorite director makes an epic film loosely based on a
novel by one of my favorite writers, and that film is immediately hailed as “essential to our troubled
modern times” and “a dark comic mirror to the
way we live” and “a
big vision to the danger and anxiety of our moment,” when the New York
Times (I know, I know) publishes an op-ed calling the film “an antifascist movie at a
fascist moment,” well,
gee-whiz. This should be the one for me! Paul Thomas Anderson’s career-capping
statement about Trump’s America? A blistering takedown of conservative
pathologies? A revelation about individual power in the face of the billionaire
extraction machine? That sure sounds like The Movie We Need Right Now.
Instead, I think One
Battle After Another is…fine.
You might like it
more. That’s kind of not what I want to talk about. What interests me most
about OBAA is actually the acclaim, which I find weird and possibly in
some cases insidious. But to get there, we probably need a few words about the
movie. There’s nothing worse than a killjoy explaining that a thing you enjoyed
wasn’t worth enjoying, so I won’t do that. It’s got one action sequence shot
with Nolan-esque ticktock precision, and another
drawing fair comparisons to The French Connection.
Benicio del Toro is as good as everyone says, tamping
down his most rococo urges. Subtextualists looking
for revolutionary references are well-fed: Leo DiCaprio’s character watches The
Battle Of Algiers and PTA needle-drops Gil
Scott-Heron. It’s the first film shot entirely with VistaVision
since 1961, and in particular the lighting is truly wonderful.
Of course, when the
fourth-most-positive thing you say about a movie involves its lighting, other
stuff may not work for you. To me, Sean Penn seems shipped in from a Dr.
Strangelove cosplay convention. The Christmas Adventurers Club plays like
an SNL skit. The screenplay takes detours vaguely inspired by Thomas
Pynchon’s source material that don’t work and aren’t necessary (e.g., the
convent where Willa briefly winds up descends from Pynchon’s hilarious ninja
nuns, who occupy a good portion of Vineland but just don’t matter much
here). The third act couldn’t happen without people doing narratively
convenient, out-of-character things (e.g., the Native American bounty hunter
growing a conscience at exactly the right moment). And the less said about
Colonel Lockjaw going full Loony Tunes surviving a bullet to the face so he can
be euthanized, the better. There are laughs and thrills and radiance enough to
make OBAA worth enjoying. I’m just not actually sure why it exists.
I know many people
don’t find OBAA as philosophically muddy as I do, and I know willfully misinterpreting
art to fit one’s purpose is older than Socrates. But buddy, when your movie has
dozens of gleeful reviews calling it a glorious anti-Trump statement, dozens of
rightwing morons
calling it “apologia for radical left-wing terrorism,” and dozens of free-thinkers
detachedly scratching their chins declaring, “I get it, you’re satirizing the
very idea of revolution,” the script may have needed a few more passes. “No-no-no-no,
see, PTA himself has mixed-race children, which means this film is about the
failure of Gen X and how the reins need to be given over to Gen Z, oh, and also
Perfidia is actually the hero because she won’t
compromise, plus, um, it shows an Underground Railroad for undocumented people
so, uh…yay?” I certainly believe my friends who say they loved OBAA. I
believe its action and comedy and set pieces worked for them better than they
worked for me.
I just kind of
don’t believe Matt Yglesias.
And I don’t
believe The
Economist. And I don’t believe The
Wall Street Journal, or Variety,
or any of the other institutions who might not love the sight of ICE herding
brown people from their homes and workplaces, but for whom such a thing isn’t a
dealbreaker. Centrism’s project is strengthening existing structures…so what to
do with a movie that purports to be about revolt? On the one hand, you can just
praise it! Call it “a masterclass in making a political film.” Invoke
Gavin Fucking Newsom as a voice for political clarity, while the rest of us
are “caught in a zone halfway between resistance and despair.” Or, on the other
hand, you can decide it’s a satire of the left. Here’s Yglesias: “The French 75 are battling an authoritarian
regime but they’re not accomplishing anything useful, they’re not particularly
heroic as individuals, and it seems plausible that their brand of resistance
backfired and brought about the outcome they were trying to fight.” Gee, purveyors
of change depicted as destructive poseurs? Wonder why
Matty likes it!
I went into OBAA
unaware of the discourse; I found it missing a coherent core, then discovered over-the-top
praise for a philosophy I still, upon a second watch, can’t really find. Who wouldn’t
want a movie that does all the things OBAA’s boosters say? “A radical
blast of action!” “A very serious, relevant response to the U.S.’s secretive
ruling class!” “A sprawling attempt to wrap its arms around the
Great-Step-Backward Age we find ourselves in!” Within the actual movie, I can
squint and see hazy outlines of these things, but with precious little
follow-through. Variety (around since 1905, owned by the offspring of an
automotive oligarch) proclaims that DiCaprio’s character’s inability to
remember a code-word reflects “the filmmaker’s perception of everything that
has gone wrong in liberal bureaucratic culture.” It does? Huh. The Hollywood
Reporter (around since 1930, owned by the same scion born on third base) rapturously
celebrates the movie’s “disarmingly noble purpose” and its fight “for all
marginalized people being so stridently attacked and demeaned across the nation
every day.” I mean, I guess the film does acknowledge those people
exist. We see them several times being shuttled wordlessly to safety. But I don’t
know what OBAA has to say about them other than, “Crime, boy, I don’t know.”
In a
piece for Defector that made me feel less crazy, Jason England says that for
a certain kind of 2025 viewer, “any vaguely liberal message (is seen) as
profound and worth celebrating…. This sort of art…is an extension of our
incoherence and desperation sold back to us as its cure. We validate it to
reassure ourselves.” I think that’s true. I think well-meaning folks
desperately want OBAA to say something, so they decide it does. But I
also think Matty Goddamn Yglasias and the titans of
Hollywood are willing to go rapturous over a film like this because in the end,
PTA’s “vision of revolution” is so so so safe. This is a formally inventive,
intellectually timid movie. Plot armor abounds. The heroic teen isn’t gonna get hurt. The goofy robe-wearing dad is gonna learn family is wherever you make it. The bad guy’s gonna get killed twice. The first time I watched, unburdened
by anything but excitement for new PTA, I felt this gradually. The second time,
it was stultifying. These are goofy, wisecracking, doe-eyed heroes, and the
movie has no interest in punishing them or teaching them anything beyond “bad
people are bad.” For all the guns and sacrificial side characters and bravura
shots and (yes) delirious lighting, OBAA has no interest in upsetting
you or, really, the apple cart. I’m glad England introduced the term “liberal”
so I don’t have to: there really is something so self-congratulatingly liberal about the pillar institutions
of Hollywood (and the Oscars)
rushing to embrace this film. “Yes. Yes! This is exactly how far rebellion
should go. Perfect. No notes. Uh, now, please leave our mansions alone.”
In his review for Hellworld on the movie’s release, Sean Collins paired One
Battle After Another with Kneecap, which I discovered thanks to Sean
and found to be a significantly more dangerous and credible portrayal of what resistance
looks like in the actual world. For a more direct comparison, I’ll add the 2022
film How To Blow Up A Pipeline. A lot fewer
laughs in that one! It does what the title says: eco-terrorists decide nothing
will ever dissuade industrial- and state-backed pollutors without violent
action, so they act. It’s exciting as hell, its point of view isn’t shrouded in
quirk, and it’s dangerous: I’ve seen it four times and the arm of my
couch has permanent fingerprint dents. Yes, different movies have different modes
and mannerisms, and I’m perilously close to being the guy who’s only seen Boss
Baby saying he’s getting a lot of Boss Baby vibes, but I think
PTA wants us to be as nervous for his victims of billionaire persecution as Pipeline
makes us for its. I just think he badly fails. And maybe you think Pipeline’s
moral clarity in a time of darkness is childish, and it’s actually OBAA
that presents a realistic contemporary view of revolution. But when the folks
who don’t actually want anything to change rush in to praise how meaningful
your film about change is? It should make you wonder.