I'm sure you can relate to this: Few things in life annoy me more than having to remember all my passwords. I could spill sauce all over my shirt and still hold my temper—but nothing infuriates me more than going through "I forgot my password" emails just to create yet another login that I'll forget again. So, you could imagine how much fun I was having in the theater watching One Battle After Another. Leonardo DiCaprio's character screams into a payphone until his eyes bulge out his sockets because he can't remember his goddamn password during a life-or-death emergency. Leo? I have never felt more seen.
That's often the case with Paul Thomas Anderson's films. He's one of my favorite directors, in part because he gravitates toward these short-tempered and out-of-the-loop characters to drive his stories. In Punch-Drunk Love, Adam Sandler does his best pre-Uncut Gems dramatic rage routine. Daniel Day-Lewis can barely stand mild annoyances in Phantom Thread, and Joaquin Phoenix's Inherent Vice P.I. stumbles around a noir that simply takes care of itself.
Thanks to Anderson's team-up with DiCaprio, One Battle After Another has a solid shot at going down as the best movie of the year. At the very least, it's certainly proving to be the most controversial.
In the film, which debuted this past weekend, DiCaprio plays a stoned and paranoid ex-revolutionary named Bob Ferguson who has checked out of the fight. However, America isn't done with him yet. The corrupt and relentless Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn) returns from Bob's past to kidnap his daughter (played by newcomer Chase Infiniti), forcing Bob back into the action.
Surprisingly, it makes for one of the funniest turns in DiCaprio's career—and one of Anderson's best films. You might ask yourself: What could be so controversial about that? Well, I'll break it down.
Outside of One Battle After Another's gags with DiCaprio and old passwords, the majority of the film deals with an out-of-control American military machine hellbent on ridding the world of any resistance to its authority. Sound familiar? So, while Col. Lockjaw destroys DiCaprio's seemingly peaceful life, characters played by the bombastic Teyana Taylor, Regina Hall, and Benicio del Toro continue the fight against immigration raids and other deadly abuses of power.
For the most part, critics so far seem to agree: One Battle After Another is a poignant film that balances Hollywood humor, action, and real-world fears. NPR and The New York Times heralded the film as a revolutionary Best Picture contender that could dominate the sociopolitical conversation for months. On the other side, Fox News panned the film as a "#Resistance wet dream."
And yet, there's another conversation happening about One Battle After Another that is seemingly coming from no definitive side of the aisle at all. All over TikTok this weekend, viewers were asking—quite simply—why the film spends so much time on the 50-year-old white guy who is lost amidst the madness? Shouldn't the film focus on the powerful characters who were fighting while he gave up?
Well, DiCaprio's role is a bit deeper than mere comic relief. His journey throughout the film is the same as the audiences, as we're clued in on the fight that Regina Hall and Benicio del Toro's characters have been fighting for decades. As Anderson explained in Esquire's latest cover story, "No one can outrun what's inevitable, which for him is to be a father and to have another generation come up from behind." Bob Ferguson eventually re-enters the political maelstrom because that's what this movie is arguing for as well. When shit hits the fan, and Col. Lockjaw and his white nationalist cronies bust down your door, we're going to need everyone who thought that they had the privilege to check out finally come to their senses.
You could see that rallying cry play out this past week, when public outrage over Donald Trump and the FCC's attack on free speech forced ABC to push back against the administration and put Jimmy Kimmel back on the air. That is One Battle After Another's fight as well—and I imagine that Anderson is hoping that you see that now, before the Col. Lockjaw-esque figures of the world have the power to make it even more of a reality. So yes, the film spends a significant time forcing Bob Ferguson into the fight, because that's the exact kind of person who needs to hear it most.
I can't say if that definitively makes One Battle After Another the best movie of the year so far—but hopefully it's a strong sign for America that the film is generating the same fire under audiences' asses as it did for Bob Ferguson.
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