"One Battle After Another" is Paul Thomas Anderson at His Most Explosive

Paul Thomas Anderson has always been a director who has lived on the edge his whole career, pushing boundaries and buttons that are taboo and nostalgic at the same time. What other director can make a love letter to the porn industry while also making it a sweet family story? Who else can make a movie where a man joins a cult and we actually understand why he would do so? These are subjects that many of us have strong feelings about, but where Anderson is brilliant is getting his audiences to care about these subjects in new ways while we hold onto our real-world beliefs on them.

I bring this up because "One Battle After Another" is another tour de force from a director who knows the craft of cinematography, editing, and how to properly utilize actors in ways that few can. It is a movie that is gripping from beginning to end, tackling challenging ideas all in a family drama that is as audience-friendly as a romantic comedy is. Yes, it has political elements that, in a politically diverse world, are sure to rub people with strong personal beliefs the wrong way. I myself do not agree with everything the characters do, or even some of the things the screenplay is suggesting are righteous. 

On the other hand, I don't believe in the conspiracy theories behind the murder of John F. Kennedy, yet Oliver Stone's "JFK" is still one of my favorite films. I don't have to agree with this movie's positions on illegal immigration, the military, or government overreach to find value in this movie. Great art can be entertaining and touching even if the views it presents are contrary to our own. "One Battle After Another" is not a movie to own the libs or vilify ultra right wing conservatism; if anything, the movie is presenting the folly of both extremes, and doing so in a way that if you aren't taking it too seriously, you may discover satire on the same level of Stanley Kubrick's classic "Dr. Strangelove: or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb."

After all, here is a movie where a racist general who wants to join a high society that only allows members who are "clean" into their club sends in military personnel on a mission to capture someone he suspects could be his illegitimate child. Sure, he could be using this military force to hunt down terrorists, but he chooses to use his power to cover up the fact that he had an affair with a black woman. What about the bomb expert who joins the resistence because of the woman he loves, only to have the resistance go up in flames and his ability to escape hindered by the fact that he has been stoned for too long to remember the passwords that would ensure he have passage to safety? How often is it that we watch a stressful chase sequence on the roofs come to a hilarious end when our protagonist misses his jump and falls off the roof?

These scenes work because Anderson is great at finding humor in chaos, creating an interesting dilemma of situations that are deeply serious yet absurdly comical at the same time. It should also be noted that in our current political climate, it is amazing that Warner Bros. greenlit a big-budget film that is highly critical of the government and its immigration policies. Do I personally agree with the movie's stance on such matters? No, not especially, but this isn't a documentary, and I'm not reviewing Anderson's politics (if these are even his own). I am reviewing acting, editing, pacing, and emotional payoffs. 

In all these regards, "One Battle After Another" excels in all these departments, with Leonardo DiCaprio giving one of his best performances and Chase Infiniti becoming a breakout star right before my eyes. That the movie is going to ruffle the feathers of significant people is only a bonus, as there are stories of people in other countries who have their films banned for upsetting the wrong people, and while this isn't a reason to see the movie itself, it is great that we live in a country where such films can still be made. "One Battle After Another" is neither a political statement nor a call to action: it is simply a wildly entertaining movie, and one of the best of the year.