In Paul Thomas Anderson The gloriously disorderly and crazy roller coaster leads through modern America, objects on the back can come out of sight, but they do not disappear.
Political struggles never die “One battle after another”, They repeat themselves. Or maybe they get older and become paranoids, pots in pots, pajama bearers like Bob Ferguson ( Leonardo DiCAPRI ), a revolutionary revolutionary living in the grid with his daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti). The cycles of oppression and resistance are felt palpable in Anderson’s film, an odyssey which covers decades where armed violence, white power and deportations of immigrants take up a dance in progress, both eccentric and tragic.
But “One Battle After Other” could also be described as a sweet film about a father reconciling with his teenage daughter with a phone – which is an example of the way in which Anderson’s destabilizing approach to the main themes can become poignant and revealing. The “scanning” would normally be a means of characterizing a multigeneration saga of almost three hours like this, but Anderson works in a more raw and compassionate compassionate register which searches strangely but acute in the American psyche.
“One Battle After Other” arrives after months of speculation and a certain skepticism because it is easily the biggest film on the scale of Anderson’s largest budget to date. But the scale is an interesting thing with regard to Anderson’s films. “Magnolia” is modest by most of the measures, but you would find it difficult to find a more ambitious film. “There will be blood” did not present a lot of spectacle beyond certain shranking wooden platforms, but it feels about as large as the frame of Daniel-Lewis by Daniel Day-Lewis, which must say terribly huge.
Likewise, “a battle after the other”, shot on Vistavision, is large and long but feels intimate and fast. This is partly due to the propulsion of its opening prologue and the absurd vigor with direct elimination of Teyana Taylor as presence on the scorching and powerful screen. Her Beverly Hills Perfia is at the center of the start of the film. And she makes a brand so powerful that it takes half an hour for “one battle after another” to pick up the pieces after her plane. (My personal recovery time is underway.)
We first see perfidia, dressed in all black, crossing a viaduct. You will find below an immigration detention center. The atmosphere is tumultuous. Bob is there, ready to trigger fireworks or bombs, but has little index of the plan. She assures him: “Make him big, brilliant appointment. Inspire me.”
They and their co-conspirators soon announce their intentions, releasing immigrants, endearing the military guards and declaring that they are the radical group French 75. It is the beginning, says Perfidia, of a revolution. Their cause is right but their will is visceral and sexual. The manufacture of bombs and sex go hand in hand. Bob is dragging after perfectia, in love with her but also with admiration. Perfedia’s mother does not give them a lot of luck as a couple. “It’s a runner and you are a stone,” she said.
At the same time, Perfedia comes into contact with Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn), a military with rocky jaws who also, Swoons For Perfedia. When they meet for the first time, she holds him under the threat of a weapon and tells him to “get up” and she does not mean her hands. These loaded scenes, followed by the pregnancy of Perfedia and new police problems for the French 75, put the table for the drama to come, fixed 16 years after this burst of opening, a frantic eruption of black and female power.
At that time, the forces led by the radicals fell their advantage. Lockjaw (it’s a tense maniacal, drained) is now moving with impunity, leading troops on illegal raids in which he chooses. Some of those in power like what it does. A secret white supremacist group called the Christmas adventurers (they talk about cleaning the earth and greeting themselves with “Merry Christmas”) offers him a subscription.
The 75 French are essentially no more. Bob is now alone with their 16 -year -old daughter. It has become less linked to the world. He calls his daughter’s friend “Homie”, has problems with pronouns and generally has a roach. It is the most lebowski-esque performance in DiCaprio, whose recent gravity towards less polite characters and subjects to errors (“Killers of the Flower Moon”, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”) made for some of its most interesting films.
Willa, however, would have the courage of his mother. (Infiniti, a newcomer, has an inner strength that appears clear as the day.) When Lockjaw comes in search of Willa, a new cycle of violence sponsored by the state is triggered. This leads a delicious Benicio Del Toro as a combination of Ssenda and Harriet Tubman to immigrants who burned Bob when the authorities close. This is probably the most chaninters in the film, but Sergio St. Carlos of the film is also the most of the freedom of the film. It is free because its goal is clear and founded in principle.
It is a film full of police convoys across the country and military tactics that effectively transform modern America into a battlefield. The film, inspired by “Vineland” by Thomas Pynchon, shares part of the shock of the culture of the anterior adaptation of Pynchon d’Anderson, “vice inherent”. But “One Battle After Oll”, honored with a swelling partition of Johnny Greenwood which gives the film a suspicion of epic, feels more urgent and more motivated.
This makes “One Battle After Other”, as a major studio outing that slams with simple representations of racism, xenophobia and vigilant, an exception in almost all areas in modern Hollywood. I am sure it will bring a debate, just like any good film. And I’m sure some will find their American portrait confused and chaotic. But these aspects also seem true, just like the spirit of combat which follows the film.
“One battle after another”, a release from Warner Bros. is noted R by the cinematographic association for omnipresent language, violence, sexual content and drug use. Running time: 170 minutes. Four in four stars.
