We’re joined by our resident Paul Thomas Anderson expert (and Mike’s brother), Stephen Glass, to whom we’ve previously spoken about Phantom Thread and Licorice Pizza, for another discussion of One Battle After Another. Stephen’s seen it in both VistaVision and IMAX 70mm, and can offer a sense of the experience Mike and José missed seeing it in IMAX Digital, and so begins a wide-ranging conversation about the film’s aesthetics, tone, politics, influences and more.
By far Paul Thomas Anderson’s most expensive film, with a budget some four or five times what he’s used to, and probably his most accessible, One Battle After Another entertains us enormously and effortlessly without sacrificing the complexity and nuance for which his work is known. Set in an alternate America oppressed by Christofascism, the alternate part is that there’s a very active militant revolutionary group, the French 75, setting bombs off and freeing detained minorities. Leonardo DiCaprio is part of it, and sixteen years after the conclusion of his group’s activities, their work has entered countercultural legend, but he’s become a drug-addicted, paranoid burnout, trying to raise a teenage daughter. When the powers that be come looking for them, they’re separated, all hell breaks loose, and he has to step up.
José finds One Battle After Another to be the film of the moment, the state of the nation film that Eddington could only dream of being, a powerful, invigorating expression of what ails America and what it means to resist. Mike is more cynical, seeing an element of mockery in the revolution that has no apparent intention to end and is carried out over generations. We love the easygoing style of filmmaking that Anderson seems to have grown into, comparing it to the rigid formality of his early work, and finding that he has a talent for action cinema that’s never quite come out before. We also discuss the film’s themes of youth and ageing, parenting, the Christian right and more.
One Battle After Another is an unmissable film, the kind that fifty years ago would have defined America’s national conversation. Cinema no longer holds that level of cultural cachet, sadly, but One Battle After Another is a powerful, energetic, and very funny reminder of what film can do at its best.
The French Dispatch, Wes Anderson’s love letter to The New Yorker, is, as you might expect, a charming way to pass a couple of hours – but not as funny or as tight as we might like, and certainly a disappointment in the light of his last two films, The Grand Budapest Hotel and Isle of Dogs (although, in fairness, reaching those heights even twice, let alone a third time consecutively, would be a big ask for anybody). Still, despite The French Dispatch‘s pleasures, some gorgeous imagery and a terrific, star-packed cast, we’re left asking what it’s all about, really – is it more than a vaguely diverting trifle based on Anderson’s favourite publication? And why can’t an ode to an icon of American sophistication be set in America?
I loved looking at it. I loved the action. I loved the world it created. I loved Laura Dern and Benicio del Toro in it. Adam Driver is filmed as a Byronic hero, anguishingly romantic and at his sexiest. It’s my favourite film in the series, including Star Wars V — The Empire Strikes Back (1980). Mike felt differently. Matt Moore, also a bit lukewarmish about the film as a whole, joins us for this discussion and points to how the film focusses on female characters and interestingly alters the focus of the series.
We discuss how the film represents a shift from an aristocratic focus on blood and destiny to a more democratic purview on social change everyone, of whatever class, race or ethnicity can engage in. Mike came out of the film gleefully playing with a light-sabre only to sit down and slash through what he saw as the film’s weaker points, though he also points out how he believes Rian Johnson is the right director for the film and how, in spite of its faults, it truly does feel like a Star Wars film. Lots of spoilers.
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It’s a mess of a movie, superficial but attractive in an oversaturated way and with the driving energy of pulp. There’s a superb cast, all at or near their best (John Travolta, Benicio del Toro) or a delight to the eye (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively). I’ve never seen Selma Hayek better than she is here as a Mexican drug-cartel Queen. The beginning is a complete cock-up, with a badly spoken narration that could come straight out of a noir parody. The end is such a muddle we’re in fact offered two (the one the film would like to have and the one it was probably made to have, neither very original). In between nothing is believable but all is sexy, glamorous, violent and fun if ultimately also somewhat unsatisfying and rather cheapening.
