One Battle After Another

 

One Battle After Another

Writer & Director ~ Paul Thomas Anderson

2025 ~ US

Stars ~ Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro,

Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti

 

Paul Thomas Anderson offers up another breathless kaleidoscopic drama full of satire, poignancy, excellent ensemble performances and several effortlessly suspenseful set-pieces. Under it all, Johnny Greenwood’s score plays between scenes and time to provide a fluidity to all the chaos. Covering a lot of ground, Anderson’s editing and script effortlessly leapfrogs decades and characters with a credo that nothing changes that much and we are forever chased down by our past. Indeed, the basis of the script is Tomas Pynchon’s novel written in 1990, and then Anderson says this took him about twenty years to write, but the observations and commentary, even with a little updating, are still relevant.

I’ve seen it criticised for being “liberal propaganda”, but the leftist terrorists here are surely just as caricatured as the weirdo, heartless Right Winger cabal, the slimeball white men plotting in bunker backrooms. The black gun totin’ pregnant promiscuous revolutionaries who forfeit motherhood for jealousy of her own baby and The Cause and the burn-out paranoid loser stoner dad are exactly fitting a conservative view of Leftist Revolutionaries to sneer at. Anderson says that he based the French 75 movement on The Weather Underground from the Seventies, which is a weirdly dated exemplar when there are surely more current possibilities to imagine (but you can’t be taken seriously if you say Antifa). Brett Easton Ellis accuses the film of “liberal mustiness”, of not reading the current political room;  but if the characters are manifestations of what their enemies imagine, the film’s  representation of the Right Wing is less outdated than of the left. That it provokes criticism for the portrayal of Prefidia too surely means it is poking at both sides; not that Ellen E Jones’ criticism of Anderson’s tripping on the Racist Jezebel trope is without merit, but that it perhaps misses a wider picture where all the main characters are filtered through questionable-cartoonish-broad filters. I bristled at both the naming of characters as Lockjaw and Junglepussy for being trite/obvious/dubious, but the the former is also funny as you roll your eyes, and learning that the latter is Shayna McHayle’s stage name means it is owned as a deliberate provocation; and certainly she uses her screentime to strut it, even as it hits on blackpoitation.

 

Sean Penn’s inscrutable sleazeball weirdo is unforgettable: I mean, “Col. Steven J. Lockjaw”… But I don’t think I go too far out on a limb when I say we see such cartoonish types representing Republicans and the interests of White Supremacy on a regular basis currently. Sean Penn finding the scariness of the caricature, Lockjaw is both ridiculous and dangerous, which is a truth. Leonardo DiCaprio bumbles and rants comically over his earnest intentions with Benicio Del Toro quietly securing his corner by moseying through his scene-stealing whilst everyone else does the fireworks. Teyana Taylor is the force of nature that propels the narrative long after she’s gone in hiding, and Chase Infiniti as Willa brings the down-to-earth, confused yet headstrong outcome to all of this. The prodigy of both sides, Willa’s story is the most shaded and it is pertinent that Infiniti’s performance doesn’t follow the broad strokes most around her: her character is single-handedly dragging the film from its Seventies’ Classic feel (“mustiness”?) into a yet uncharted future rebelliousness.

 

The police descending upon Sensei Sergio St. Carlos’ operation as Bob argues about passwords trying to connect with his old movement and, especially, the final car chase are highlights. Dark farce and excellent propulsive pacing mean the momentum never lets up: we are dropped into the action and it never slows, and despite what it is made of, it never feels polemical over the movie needs of fun and thrill. Afterwards, you can do your think-piece. Amusing, exciting, a little surprising, it moves from the debatable broadsides into something more heartfelt and, through the symbol and promise of Willa, something more hopeful, even if there is no certainty of what.

In fact, how relevant and zeitgeisty it feels makes it a significant satire, because: if ‘Civil War’ was portentous in its declarations, ‘One Battle After Another’ roots it all in the messy insecurities and weirdness of the individuals concerned, trying to live down their past or abusing their positions. In fact, its skewering of political extremities to personal flaws and ego is evergreen, especially for a country always at war with itself and in the Trump era feels more vital than ever.

Peterloo

Mike Leigh, 2018, UK

With The evidence of ‘Mr Turner’ preceding this, it turns out that Mike Leigh has emerged as one of the premier artists of period cinema. 'Peterloo' follows the lineage of Bertolucci’s ‘1900’ or the work of the Taviani brothers. With almost every shot, it resembles classical portraits brought to life, people moving and living in those portraits on walls of national galleries. As with ‘Mr Turner’, occasionally there will be a vista of landscape to take the breath away, but it is never quite prolonged to give the jaw time to fall all the way ajar. In this way, the editing is fluid and never showy, never intruding on the acting or story or the impressive set design. And no matter how immersive the aesthetic, it is always secondary to the exemplary ensemble cast. But the opening is the notable exception. 

From the opening shot, Leigh seizes the attention with the long take of Joseph (David Moorst) in the middle of the Battle of Waterloo, bemused, looking around at the carnage and explosions, trying to do his job as bugler even as it’s a wonder he isn’t killed. It is the one time the camera feels deliberately aware and subjective, circling him as if closing off any escape route. Here is a man being traumatised. 

When he gets home to Manchester, it’s to vivid poverty and disenfranchisement. Indeed, the endless meetings seem like class war counsels. The locals are attending pro-democracy meetings and getting all fired up over trying to get the vote. This is an era where only 2% of the population had the vote and the new corn laws were causing starvation. And so cue the rich sitting at a banquet whilst the impoverished suffer and struggle to have agency. 

As Peter Bradshaw summarises:

On 16 August 1819, at what we would now call a pro-democracy demonstration in St Peter’s Field, Manchester, an excitable band of cavalry and yeomanry – whose commander had airily absented himself for a day at the races – charged with sabres drawn into a crowd of 100,000 unarmed people, many of whom were unable to escape the enclosed space. The troops killed 18 and injured hundreds more.

The dichotomy is distinctly between the cruel and paranoid authorities and the down-to-earth working class poor united by righteousness. The dissenting argument is that the authorities are coloured too broadly, as caricatures, but this is surely endemic in polemical commentary. In George Cruikshank’s satirical ‘The Massacre at St. Peters, or Britons Strike Home’ (1819) the yeomanry are all plump and rosy-cheeked, flush with outrage and righteousness as they cut down the unfortunate protesters. This is even a feature of Richard Carlile’s more austere painting representing the scene (1819). Indeed, the yeomanry were often freeholders and tenant farmers themselves (having funds to buy uniforms, etc.). 

On horseback, armed with sabres and clubs, many were familiar with, and had old scores to settle with, the leading protesters. (In one instance, spotting a reporter from the radical Manchester Observer, a Yeomanry officer called out "There's Saxton, damn him, run him through.") 

http://www.peterloomassacre.org/history.html

This can be nothing else but anecdotal but is an illustration that broad and partisan have always defined the event. Since we know that the magistrates did indeed order the soldiers to let loose on the crowd, it is hard to imagine any portrayal that would not portray them as outright villains (well, not without going down a ‘Birth of a Nation’ route). Here, they act in arrogance, anger and chaos; conniving and sure of their superiority. The more moderate and mitigating magistrate voices are shouted down and side-lined for the rush to blustering authoritarianism. 

When so many of our contemporary political figures seem cartoonish or behave like caricatures – just look around – it is perhaps a little limited to just dismiss Leigh’s characters as caricatures: the massacre is historical fact and it is quite believable that the boorishness and callousness of the authoritarians were to blame. The villainy is in their actions, regardless of their portrayal. When the massacre happens, it is shown as much the result of chaos and shouting as brutality. But yes, there is no doubt there is a good and bad side, with the latter scheming and misconstruing for fear of the workers and selfishness. Whether politics and political action has progressed is for debate.

‘Peterloo’s  uniformly impressive ensemble cast populates this vast tapestry of period recreation and polemic. It’s cleanly and beautifully shot by Dick Pope and there is much detail to wallow in; but the constant talk and rhetoric may put some off and occasionally falls into exposition of history notes. Perhaps this is inevitable given the nature of the project, Leigh’s intent to give as much perspective as possible and how this has been a lesser known historical massacre. There are subplots of PTSD, disillusionment with one’s heroes, agent provocoteurs, the role of the media supplementing the bigger themes of the political scheming, infighting and class war, all funnelling into the final tragedy. 

Perhaps there is a little repetition and a meeting or two too many, but Leigh lays down as many ramifications as he can so that when the massacre begins – the joyous and open feeling of the protesters in contrast to the outraged and bickering magistrates – all the details culminate to produce the appropriate horror. This final sequence does not use the rapid editing utilised to induce the facsimile of excitement as typical of action sequences, but rather speeds up its straightforward observations to clearly show the confusion and awkwardness of the atrocity on all sides. Hoards of extras run around as the horses and sabres crash in and all the groundwork laid beforehand is rewarded and crucial as the ramifications and the small stories and, most importantly, the individuals are not lost in the grand scale of the terror. 

Such a film can be seen not only as a rendering of things gone by, but a direct warning of what is still possible in our current age where the political climate is so volatile and contentious, there’s an apparent ever-widening divide between the rich and poor and protest marches are regular and bigger than ever. As a film, it’s a brilliant piece of politicised drama where Leigh’s textured but unfussy vision offers a history lesson of outrage and empathy to those still struggling against inequality and oppression.