California. Patrick, who is white, and Perfidia, who is black, are members of a far-left revolutionary group, French 75, who break into the Ota Mesa Detention Center and release the detained Mexican immigrants there, while Perfidia also holds military officer Steven J. Lockjaw at gunpoint, who gets aroused. Lockjaw blackmails Perfidia into having affairs with him as to not arrest her. Patrick and Perfidia become lovers and get a baby, Charlene, but Perfidia escapes the country when the police are after her for murder. 16 years later, Patrick assumes the fake identity of Bob and Charlene is called Willa, to hide their past connection with French 75. When Lockjaw, now a Colonel, wants to become a member of a far-right white supremacist secret society, he uses the military to hunt down Willa, his biological daughter, to kill her to hide the fact that he had a child with a black woman, Perfidia. Willa escapes and kills assassin Tim, and reunites with Bob. Lockjaw is assassinated by the secret society for interracial relationships.
"One Battle After Another" is one of those movies that go for style over substance. There is not much of a plot in it nor narrative inspiration, as much as there is just pure cinematic fascination-infatuation with filmmaking in and of itself, even when just depicting ordinary scenes. It is not the best film by director Paul Thomas Anderson, but was still arguably the best film among the American films nominated for best picture at various awards—though several foreign nominated films were superior, for instance "The Voice of Hind Rajab". "One Battle After Another" has several flaws—for instance, its structure is messy and chaotic, a lot of complex social issues are just brought up or hinted at, instead of being elaborated properly (two scene of US soldiers walking between two giant fences containing Mexican immigrants at a detention center, but without having either Mexicans or soldiers as characters to say what they think about it; Willa is shown doing karate, but this is not used in the final act of the film, even though it would have been very useful), whereas it is a screenwriting error to remove the crucial character Perfidia (Teyana Taylor) from the story after 33 minutes and, incredibly, not have her return for the finale—but it is timely by touching the nerve of its time by showing the United States as torn between left and right-wing politics, who have become so incompatible and alienated from each other that they both went into extremism, while father Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) and daughter Willa (very good Chase Infiniti) try to live in a healthy, normal way in the middle. The opening act contemplates at some problems regarding far-left politics in itself when Perfidia leaves Bob alone with their baby because she wants to take herself first, as opposed to him expecting her to take on a more conservative role as a mother. Equally as ironic is that the far-right, white supremacist military commander Steven J. Lockjaw (excellent Sean Penn) has an affair with the far-left Perfidia, who is black, thereby showing how even far-right and far-left politics need to cooperate to keep the society functioning, despite their disagreements. These themes about politics are always in the background, while the family triangle is the foreground. One highlight: the 4-minute car chase sequence on the "waves" of a hilly road, filmed in VistaVision and realized without any dialogue, is phenomenally cinematic, a hypnotic experience. That Anderson made it totally spontaneously is incredible. And it sums up the entire film: it is made by the cineastes and for the cineastes. Nothing else matters but the aesthetics, the thin story is just at its service.
Grade:+++
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