JACKSON BRAGMAN

Special to The Denisonian

As I acknowledged in my last article, I had initially left Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another off of my list. However, after its historically dominant award season run over the past few months culminated with six Oscar wins, including one for Best Picture, I decided to revisit the film for the first time since I saw it in theaters back in October.

Maybe it’s recency bias, or perhaps I was swept up by Anderson’s charm after he took home his first long overdue Academy Awards (plural), but all I know is that for the past week, for one reason after another, I haven’t been able to get his film out of my head.

Loosely adapted from the Thomas Pynchon novel, Vineland, One Battle After Another follows Pat (Leonardo DiCaprio), an explosives specialist offering his services to the far-left militant group known as the French 75. After his comrades-including Bob’s girlfriend and the mother to his newborn child, Perfidia (Teyana Taylor)-are pinched during a bank heist gone wrong, Pat and his daughter must go off the grid and escape to the fictional Humboldt County, California under the aliases of Bob and Willa Ferguesson.

Sixteen years later, Willa (Chase Infiniti)’s world descends into disarray when she finds out she’s being hunted down by Colonel Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn)-an old foe of Bob and the French 75’s-and is forced to flee her school dance to evade abduction. A now washed-up and paranoid Bob must set out to find and rescue his daughter before it’s too late.

One Battle After Another is about many things, but, above all else, it’s about fighting for what you believe in. For years, albeit through extreme measures, Bob made an honest effort to foster the progressive change he wanted to see in the world. Years later though, we see that not much has changed. Refugees still sit in cages along the US-Mexico border, underground white supremacist organizations still lurk in the shadows of society, pursuing racial purification, and the government and military still remain corrupt and dishonest with the public.

There is shame and guilt for Bob in knowing that he’s failed the next generation, that he’s failed his daughter. We see that he’s grown jaded and pessimistic about the future, and, as is common for men growing into middle age, his political views have grown more centrist. His core values remain the same, but he seems a bit mystified by Willa’s nonbinary friend, Bobo, and he has little patience for Comrade Josh, a modern-day French 75 member, relaying his coordinates as “somewhere between the stolen land of the Wabanaki and the stolen land of the Chumash”

Being that he’s the middle-aged white father of three biracial daughters, it’s difficult not to view Anderson’s latest project through an autobiographical lens. During his Oscars acceptance speech for Best Adapted Screenplay, the writer-director said, “I wrote this movie for my kids, to say sorry for the housekeeping mess that we left in this world we’re handing off to them, but also with the encouragement that they will be the generation that hopefully brings us some common sense and decency.”

Later in the evening in his Best Picture speech (his third of the night), Anderson thanked his cast. 

“Leo, Benicio, Teyana, Sean, Regina, and especially Chase,” he said. “My American Girl Chase: you are the heart of this movie.”

It’s here that Anderson conveys a feeling that the quintessential “American Girl” in 2025 is no longer necessarily someone with blond hair and blue eyes, but rather someone who looks like Infiniti, who looks like Anderson’s daughters.

He’s intentional about the fact that, although we spend more time with Bob than any other character, this is really Willa’s film. We see how strong-willed and defiant she is in what would be an unthinkably terrifying situation for most any other 16-year-old girl.

At one point in the film’s second act, Willa takes refuge at a safe house, disguised as a weed-growing nunnery virtuously named, “Sisters of the Brave Beaver.”

One of the nuns is skeptical of Willa, who learns that her mother previously snitched on her French 75 contemporaries in favor of amnesty. The nun tells her, “We will not allow residence to anyone who cannot take responsibility for both her input and output.”

Willa replies, “I can earn what I eat and secure what I shit if that’s what you mean.”

At the film’s end, reunited with Bob and back home, Willa hears a radio announcement for a protest in Oakland.

“Did they say Oakland?” Bob asks Willa, as we get a timely needle drop for Tom Petty’s “American Girl.”

“Ya,” Willa replies.

“You know Oakland’s a three-and-a-half-hour drive from here.”

“Ya”

Willa knows it’s her turn to pick up her father’s mantle. She too knows that, in the words of the late Gil Scott-Heron, “The revolution will not be televised.”

“You know that’s far right? It’s raining out,” he says as Willa grabs her bright yellow rain jacket, a small, but bright token of hope. “Hey, be careful.”

“I won’t,” Willa replies, both feet already out the door.