“One Battle After Another” is an aggressively antagonistic, satirical adult comedy-drama that is as bravura an example of demented cinema as you’re going to find in this era of tedious comic book movies for audiences who prefer filmed pudding to something substantial.
The only consistently imaginative originality coming out of the moviemaking capitals of the world during the past few years has been in the horror genre. The problem is that you generally can’t get general audiences to join in the scary fun. Imagine if horror films reached box office numbers received by a production squeezed from the dregs of what remains from the 1930s and 1940s comic books. One example of creative failure on a high level is the most recent “Superman.” Calling it original and groundbreaking is laughable. What’s original about it? The use of a silly dog?
“One Battle After Another” is writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson’s tenth film. It rises out of the 1990 novel “Vineland” by Thomas Pynchon and introduces a slate of characters whose offbeat names are right out of writer Joseph Heller’s 1961 fictional masterwork, “Catch-22.”
Anderson’s feature belongs front and center in the Bathrobe School of Visual Entertainment. Throughout much of the movie, actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s “Ghetto” Pat Calhoun, also to be known as Bob Ferguson, wears a bathrobe, whether he’s indoors or outside. He shoots a gun while wearing a robe better than anyone I’ve seen. He enters the top three of bathrobe-wearing leading characters, the other two being Jeff Bridges as Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski from “The Big Lebowski” and James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano in “The Sopranos.” Yes, I know “The Sopranos” isn’t a movie, but its brilliant creativity is better on its worst day than 90% of what comes out of studio and independent filmmaking these days.
How about some other good bathroom wearing characters, men and women whose essential leisure garb makes you sit up you and take notice? Try these on for size: Marilyn Monroe in “Niagara,” Robert De Niro comfortable in a pink silk robe in “Casino,” Matthew Broderick in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” Jean Harlow in “Dinner At Eight,” Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman,” Brad Pitt in “Fight Club,” and Jack Nicholson donning an animal print robe in “The Departed.”
Anderson has long wanted to make a feature based on “Vineland,” but moviemaking being the roll of the dice that it is, things didn’t work out as swiftly as he had hoped they would. “One Battle After Another” has its roots in that book, but uses it more as a rugged structural framework than anything else. He did make a good film based on Pynchon’s 2009 novel, “Inherent Vice.” One of the satisfying vibes rolling out of that motion picture is that Mark Bridges, who was born, raised and educated in Niagara Falls, designed the costumes and was nominated for an Academy Award for his creativity. The very talented Bridges has received two Oscars for his costume designs. One for Anderson’s outstanding 2017 “Phantom Thread” and the other for the wonderful modern silent film “The Artist,” from 2011. He was also nominated for costuming for 2019’s “Joker.”
In “One Battle After Another,” we are in a world that leaps verbally and visually out of today’s headlines. The story involves radicals of the left and the right of the political spectrum. One clandestine group on the left calls itself French 75. It doesn’t reject violence and will resort to bank robberies and bombings as needed. On the right, one secret society of rich, white supremacists is known as the Christmas Adventurers Club. Having wealth means being able to buy subtlety, but these racist and sexist men, who speak through clenched teeth, are as dangerous as French 75. They are led by Virgil Throckmorton, who is played by Tony Goldwyn.
The movie begins with a violent raid by French 75 on an immigrant detention center on the U.S.-Mexico border in order to liberate the detainees. One of the attackers is the aforementioned “Ghetto” Pat Calhoun, and another is Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), both of whom will figure prominently in the movie. One of the results of the attack is that the center’s commanding officer, Colonel Stephen J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), will eventually be sexually humiliated.
The first third of the 162-minute film is a daring road map to the intense and often deranged set of violent actions and car chases that are soon to be rolled out. Anderson establishes that he doesn’t fear delivering a fiercely paced story. Think of how director Alfred Hitchcock propelled the audience and kept them on edge with the crisp pacing in the first half of his “Psycho.”
In “One Battle After Another,” years pass in the blink of an eye. Perfidia has entered the witness protection program and has ratted out her former compatriots, some of whom are killed. Perfidia and Calhoun have a baby named Charlene, but domesticity is out of the question. There are important causes festering in a ceaseless battle for control of America. Colonel Lockjaw continues on his rampage. Pat and an older Charlene (played by Chase Infiniti) have gone into hiding and are using the phony names Bob and Willa Ferguson. She is kidnapped and Pat/Bob is determined to solve the physical and existential problems that find him under drug-fueled duress.
Director Anderson doesn’t allow “One Battle After Another” to be a sop to comfortable moviegoing laughter. He has his creative vision firmly on the dark side of satire. There are laughs, but some moviegoers may find the humor disconcerting, or even ugly and unacceptable. One of my favorite mild jokes involves the reasoning behind the rejection of the use of a password. I’m surprised it’s never been verbalized before. Or, at the very least, I haven’t heard it being used. A sanctuary city is run by Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro) and the billionaire boys club still has more money than is necessary to carry out their kind of Christmas adventure. The acting by all is superb, and DiCaprio, as Anderson’s guiding light, is so good, he is now untouchable as a talent. Sound a trumpet for some Academy Award flourishes. Bold and risk-taking just might include some Oscar glory.