What "One Battle After Another" is Really About

It's not politics, but you still have to mention politics

This poster hides that the movie is pretty funny despite all the serious action

I watched One Battle After Another last weekend — the new Paul Thomas Anderson movie with Leonardo DiCaprio — and it’s definitely one of those films that makes everyone want to talk about politics afterward, which is probably the least interesting part of it.

There’s been a lot of hemming, a lot of hawing, especially from conservatives about the portrayal of cages, of immigrants in cages, of who’s “good” and who’s “bad.” You can find one of those reviews here from Aaron Renn — “Why This Film Fuels Political Hate” — and while it’s representative of a certain reaction, it’s not particularly well-done.

Just because a film portrays something doesn’t mean it endorses it.

Yes, the main characters lean “left.” Sure, we feel sympathy for them. That’s what movies do, we follow the people on the screen. But the film isn’t really about politics. It’s about a father and a daughter and how far that father will go to protect her.

It’s an artsy Taken. Or Father of the Bride (lol, ok maybe not).

And it’s also really funny.

Like, not in a joke-a-minute way, but in unexpected ways.

Sean Penn’s Colonel Lockjaw walks with this stiff, self-serious gait and he talks in half-shouted slogans and something called “The Christmas Adventurers” (which didn’t really work for me).

And then there’s Leo.

Bathrobe Leo. Leo who hasn’t shaved. Leo sprinting through convenience stores in house slippers, muttering to himself, half-stoned, trying to remember how to be an action hero, and falling off roofs and getting tased played completely straight.

But again, no one really “wins.”

The revolutionaries end up in jail, the conservatives stay in power despite everything. Sean Penn’s character gets humiliated by the very people he’s trying to impress. The villains remain.

So what we’re left with is Leo’s character, a washed-out leftist who lives semi-isolated but not totally off the grid. He still goes into town, watches TV, gets high, doesn’t really have a job, until his daughter goes missing and he has to put the bathrobe back on.

He stumbles, he drives, he falls down, he keeps going and somehow, by sheer stubbornness and a bit of help from his old friends, he finds her again.

That’s the movie.

All the politics is scaffolding. The real thing is dad trying to keep his daughter safe, even if he’s completely out of his depth.

Teyana Taylor’s character complicates it. She’s the mother, the one who left, the one who crosses lines and likes flirting with the other side before turning in her friends. She’s the kind of person who could blow up her own cause because it’s the most interesting thing to do in that moment.

Take the setting for what it is: a setting. Don’t read so much into the background noise.

It’s basically a Mission Impossible movie. Just slower, weirder, funnier, and much more human. That’s the Paul Thomas Anderson difference.

Keep going-

Josh Spilker