ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER

💪

No, this is not a summary of the last six or so years of my life and yet another lengthy “woe is me” whinge about cancer and poverty and divorce, you’ll be grateful to hear, but some brief thoughts about Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest UTI-generating extravaganza (161 minutes… yikes!  Could we have just one fewer battles after the others, please, Paul?…).

I was not at the starry, celeb-packed premiere on Tuesday, but at a preview screening on Monday, attended by a much less groomed and, frankly, much uglier motley crew of Bafta voters with the exception of one woman who was in cocktail attire, presumably having been somewhat misled as to the nature of the event by her sheepish-looking date who wore jeans and a filthy wax jacket.  Awks.  I am a believer in never being knowingly underdressed, but it must be disappointing to think you’re going to rub shoulders with Leo on the red carpet and then spend an hour in line in your sequins outside the Odeon Leicester Square in strong northerly winds with loadsa gaffers and grips (although Leo was at our screening, just only for a Q and A and with no intention whatsoever of rubbing anything up against any member of our grubby lot… we’re all way, way, way too old for him!).

Despite being less glitzy, our screening was equally packed and the cinema is absolutely enormous, a testament to PTA (as he likes to refer to himself… in the third person… ffs) and his status as a filmmakers’ filmmaker, I suppose.  While sharing a film-watching experience is essential to the form, sharing it with 800 people is going too far, imo, diluting it somehow and making it rather difficult to suspend one’s disbelief with the constant flow of people in and out of swinging doors in search of the toilet or the bar… or both (okay, that was me… mea culpa! 🙄).  To boot, the sound of hundreds of cans of water being opened as the first reel rolled (and yes, there were reels!  It was shown on VistaVision, which might part-explain the choice of aspect ratio, a decision which may help drive the action and convey the focus of our entirely incompetent protagonist as he searches for his entirely competent daughter, but which robs us of whatever might be happening on the peripheries of the screen and the staggering beauty of some of the phenomenal desert landscapes) sounded like a John Cage composition.

Anywho, I don’t think it will surprise anyone to hear that ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER is very, very good, obvs, and full of memorable moments and quite brilliant performances (bravo mon ami Cassandra Kulukundis!  Despite having the most ridiculous name known to man, Chase Infiniti is a real find…. Although both Regina Hall and Alana Haim are wasted, imo, or had their roles brutally cropped, a sacrifice made to save our bladders, presumably?), but I can’t help but think it could (and should) be better.  Inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, the narrative is pretty loose (this is a PTA film of the INHERENT VICE and LIQUORICE PIZZA variety rather than the taut and meticulously constructed THERE WILL BE BLOOD and PHANTOM THREAD variety) and tonally the film is very patchy, described as an Action-Comedy in press materials but possibly more accurately defined as an Action-Thriller AND a Comedy, the two roughly sewn together insofar as Teyana Taylor (brilliantly and beautifully… she’s stunning…) was in an Action-Thriller, exclusively, while Leonardo DiCaprio and Benicio del Toro were in a (dark, mostly, but at moments pretty broad…) comedy, exclusively, and I believe a genre has yet to be invented to adequately describe the world occupied by Sean Penn’s ludicrous but immensely enjoyable Lockjaw (who seemed utterly dazed and unable to find his words in the Q and A….  Welfare check on Mr Penn, anyone?).

The reason for the narrative laxity and tonal patchiness was exposed in the Q and A, possibly, where PTA and all of the lead cast were awfully chummy with one another and spoke of their filmmaking experience as if it were a communal effort, entirely unstructured and ad hoc, with del Toro claiming to have written most of his scenes (which feel influenced by the other Anderson, possibly an indication there was insufficient clear water between him filming this and THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME?), which I struggle to entirely believe (and, incidentally, Tom Cruise did the same thing recently, claiming he had written much of Frank TJ Mackey’s workshop performance and “Respect the cock” speech, which I don’t believe to be true at all… sozzles, Tom Tom, for questioning your recollection, but I was there…). 

PTA talked about working with non-professional actors in all of the smaller roles, opting to immerse the principal cast and crew in existing communities of real people and locations, adapting and shape-shifting to accommodate what was there for them IRL rather than trying to fully fabricate the world of the film.  And there’s something very nice and unpolished and idealistic and real and raw about it, I guess, but it does mean much of the movie feels like a happy accident more than a grand design, somewhat lacking in intention (and whether a film has achieved what was intended by the filmmaker is generally how I measure its success or otherwise, so I’m on rather rocky ground with this loosey-goosey style of creation, criticism-wise).

Is it really possible that decisions impacting a studio’s $175M investment in an auteur were made by committee and without authorial intention (even if said committee includes acting royalty like Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro, who I saw in the airport en route home from Cannes this year, incidentally, and who is totes gorgeous and looking amazing for his 58 years… swoon…😍…. Might have to get a Benicio Bauble AND a Benson Boone Bauble for the Christmas tree this year to go with Harry and Pedro from yesteryear… 🎄🤔)?   It’s not impossible, I guess, but such an approach to filmmaking is very high risk (so… kinda unlikely from Warner Bros, right?) and it would require a filmmaker with an entirely restrained and relatively small ego (so… kinda impossible from PTA, right?!).

Whether ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER was made exactly as intended or is more of a happy accident to one side, there is no denying it is good.  It is very good.  It might be very, very good. It’s imperfect, obvs, but perfection is overrated. The grand finale will go down as a classic car chase scene, I think, and some of the dialogue is bizarre and wonderful and very, very quotable.  Bravo (to whomever scripted it….)!  Let’s just hope it can recoup the budget and this is not the last we see of such laissez-faire filmmaking from PTA (but I wouldn’t put my money on it, if I had any, tbh…. THERE WILL BE BLOOD made a paltry $76M in box office receipts despite being at the tippety-top of many cinephiles’ Best Films lists… albeit without lovely paedophile-adjacent Leo). ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

(And bravo me for managing to separate the art from the artist… within reason… 😇)

Update: after a second and third watch and some deep introspection… here’s to admitting I totally overthunk this and it is really quite brilliant. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️