American Girl
By Violet Lucca
One Battle After Another
Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, U.S., Warner Bros.
This review contains plot spoilers.
After his daughter has gone to the high school dance with two of her friends, a very hungover Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) settles down on his couch to watch Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers (1966) while sucking on a roach. It’s the ultimate bad boy moment, one that’s as pathetic and clichéd as the term “bad boy.” This indignity is heightened by the fact Bob used to be a real revolutionary, a member of the leftist French 75. His name is “Bob” now because he’s in hiding.
The Battle of Algiers is typically thought of as the ultimate representation of the Algerian War for Independence—its documentary style and use of untrained actors (some of whom were in the FLN) lends credence to this idea. However, the film represents one action taken by the FLN, not the entire conflict, and alters some of the events to suit the FLN-led government’s agenda, including diminishing the role of female revolutionaries. While the people in the film—or their composites—were heroes, the film’s reputation as “the truth” is extremely dubious. Consider, instead Djamila the Algerian (1958), a film directed by Yousef Chahine (and co-written by Naguib Mahfouz), which dramatizes the life of revolutionary Djamila Bouhired. (Bouhired is only briefly glimpsed in The Battle of Algiers.) Instead of just smuggling things through French checkpoints with her abayas, Djamila is an extremely active, happy, and fully fleshed-out teenager who goes to school, bombs cafés, and undergoes torture after being captured by the French. (The film ends with her being sentenced to death.) Made during the golden years of Egypt’s studio system, the film blends Hollywood aesthetic conventions and scenarios with revolution: one of the film’s comedic breaks involves Djamila’s uncle hiding a gun from French soldiers in a bubble bath; a sexy lady dances at a nightclub to distract French soldiers from an operation. Somehow the film holds all of these disparate elements together, bringing the overtly political and marginal to the mainstream. (There’s also a lot of pan-Arabism; Nasser had just nationalized the Suez Canal two years before.) Rather than dance around politics by pretending that being a socialist is a free speech issue (Trumbo) or that the guy who wrote Rules for Radicals just wants you to vote (The Trial of the Chicago 7), Djamila the Algerian gives radicals and radical politics the glory of a studio system, allowing these seemingly opposed things to enhance each other.
Somehow Paul Thomas Anderson’s magnificent One Battle After Another achieves a similar thrilling grace. Shot in glorious VistaVision, it unapologetically addresses the completely inexcusable injustices of contemporary American life while being incredibly funny, exciting, suspenseful, and poignant, particularly about the act of parenting a biracial child. If anyone still cared about movies, conservatives would be demanding that this, not boring Jimmy Kimmel, be removed from public circulation and destroyed. (The trailers for the film, which don’t make it seem like an action movie about revolutionary politics whatsoever, are likely strategic.)
From the first frame, it’s clear no punches will be pulled: Rocket Man (the younger Bob), the explosives expert, rendezvous with the rest of the French 75, who are about to liberate a migrant detention center. Families held in cages, outside and inside, with only the clothes on their backs and a government-issued space blanket. Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), a fellow revolutionary who’s wearing a crop top and low-rise pants, instructs Rocket Man to “create a show.” And they do. With the intensity of the gas well blowout scene in There Will Be Blood (2007), the French 75 rush through the facility, a sideways tracking shot moving as fluidly as their righteous, youthful bodies. Perfidia, by contrast, savors the moment by taking extra time to humiliate the camp’s commander, Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), by ordering him to get erect without touching himself, get on his knees (“like you’re about to suck a dick”), and jerk off in front of her. After fastening zip ties on the hands of soldiers stationed there, loading some of the migrants into a semi, the group speed away in crappy old cars. (Unlike nearly every other contemporary action film, there are no car company tie-ins—a wretched fate that even befell The Sopranos.) Before they escape, Perfidia begins making out with Rocket Man—she can’t help it. The thrill is too great.
Unlike many contemporary films that have one bravura tracking shot at the beginning and then rely almost entirely on static close-ups of dialogue for the rest of the runtime, the film doesn’t slow down from here. The French 75 continue their incredible run, performing actions that are explicit references to working class/revolutionary history, such as bombing the Haymarket Office of an anti-choice politician, while others have a contemporary flavor, such as blowing up power grids. To quote Crimethinc, it’s days of war and nights of love. This sequence of flawlessly executed actions isn’t a flashy montage, but a succession of slightly longer, detail-oriented moves against the state and capitalism. Snippets of their political platform (if we can call it that) are espoused as they run roughshod over a sick country: “No more telling me to vote!” Amidst this controlled chaos, Perfidia becomes pregnant. However, as Rocket Man and fellow member Deandra (Regina Hall) ruefully note, she doesn’t really act like it, swilling beer, recklessly shooting her gun, and going on missions.
Things don’t get easier once Perfidia gives birth—but why would they? “She’s from a long line of revolutionaries,” Perfidia’s mother tells Rocket Man. “She’s a runner and you’re a stone.” With genetics working against him, he becomes their daughter’s primary caregiver. However, Perfidia, like all the radicals in this film, is human; she confesses that she feels jealous of the baby. However, it’s unclear whether it’s selfishness or The Struggle that keeps making Perfidia go out to fight. “This is a new consciousness,” she snaps at Rocket Man as he objects to her heading out. “I’m not your mother…you and your crumbling male ego will never do this revolution like me.” She certainly has a point. But neither the straight world nor the revolutionary one is set up for someone who births a baby to “do their biological duty” and continue putting in work as usual.
However, the French 75 have bigger problems. The group’s downfall is reminiscent of the Weather Underground’s final years under Bernardine Dohrn, suggesting that maybe the French 75 aren’t decentralized like antifa, but are led by one (female) person. During a bank robbery where Junglepussy (Shayna McHayle) hops up on the tellers’ counter and starts bragging about how she doesn’t have to hide her face, a security guard slowly crawls towards Perfidia. She begs him to stop, but he doesn’t, so she shoots him. This is a turning point: like the Weather Underground, none of their previous operations had a body count. This death immediately fucks everything. The crew scatters and, despite multiple escape cars heading different directions (yet another incredible action set piece), Perfidia is caught. The cops cheer and take selfies as she’s wheeled into the station.
In custody, Perfidia lives up to her name (“perfidia” means treachery in Spanish). She rats, goes into witness protection, and one by one her comrades are capped or taken into custody. (Dohrn never squealed.) Her deal is brokered by Lockjaw, who receives a medal of honor for catching these degenerate terrorists; he’s also grown a sexual obsession with Perfidia. Afterwards, he goes over to the stifling suburban home Perfidia’s been sent to with a bouquet of flowers; after she fails to answer, he uses his battering ram to break down her door and finds a note that simply says, “This pussy don’t pop for you.” Perhaps, like Henry Hill, it was the egg noodles and ketchup; maybe it was fulfilling an unspoken part of her deal with Lockjaw. Perfidia disappears and never returns.
This profoundly damages three people: Lockjaw, Rocket Man, and her daughter. Sixteen years later, we see the different types of pain it has wrought. This leap forward is executed through a nonchalant cut, another one of Anderson’s incredible temporal gambits. It’s at once a non-hokey visualization of “they grow up so fast” and an assertion of Perfidia’s physical power and irresistible charisma. Despite the time jump, as a voiceover explains, “the world has changed very little.” Lockjaw has continued to rise through the ranks by sticking Central Americans in military camps (still in cages, still just have their clothes and space blankets), but he has the opportunity to rise even higher. He receives an invitation to join “The Christmas Adventurers Club,” a secret white supremacist organization of elite power brokers. The name represents the seemingly innocuous nature of the far-right (the Proud Boys, the Boogaloo Boys), but also implies the wish that “all your Christmases be white.” During his interview, one elderly member (Kevin Tighe) explains to Lockjaw: “It just means you are superior to other beings…dedicated to making the world safe and pure.” Lockjaw denies he’s ever had an interracial relationship; as he leaves, quietly as he entered, his eyes are full of tears, either for his lost Perfidia or the joy of really cracking down on those illegals. Probably both. Lusting for a black woman doesn’t cure racism.
Rocket Man is now Bob Ferguson (which feels like a nod to that great 2014 uprising) and his daughter is named Willa (Chase Infiniti). The handy, cool revolutionary has been replaced by a middle-aged burnout. His daughter, by contrast, practices karate (shades of the Panthers) and is, per her history teacher, “a born leader.” After the capture of another member of The French 75—one of many people who are sitting inside an office or shipping container and told some variation of “if you help me, I’ll help you” by a man wearing fatigues—Bob and Willa’s cover is blown. Lockjaw seizes on the opportunity to raid Bacton Cross, the sanctuary city where father and daughter live. As the military flies in, Lockjaw—who, like our president, wears lifts in his shoes—cautions his troops: “Expect civilians to be sympathetic to the criminals.”
In moments like these, you can feel the terror of the state outside of the film: the lives ruined in order to “play to the base,” the people who are going to be deported for no other reason than supporting Palestine, the people who continue to suffer despite a court ruling in their favor, or those who will be black-bagged by men without badges and stuffed into vehicles for doing activism that’s far less daring than the French 75. The mere existence of certain people in this country has become intolerable to those who run it. It feels unreal that One Battle After Another, which just happened to come into existence at this moment where the already slim amount of agency most of us are handed at birth is being whittled down further and further, really exists. But it’s not wrong if you just feel for Bob, Willa, and their neighbors, who are targets of a force driven by irrational animosity and pride. That is good enough.
While Deandra successfully extracts Willa from the dance, Bob has forgotten the code—an extended dialogue, a call and response—and cannot go to the rendezvous point. He’s forgotten everything about being an actual revolutionary; his stupid ass is just watching The Battle of Algiers. After arguing with an unknown “comrade” at the other end of the pirate radio, Bob—still wearing his red flannel robe—manages to escape through a small tunnel beneath his house and books it. He slowly runs through a park near his property, which is full of happy families of all races at cookouts and playing frisbee. These are just regular people at a regular park: they’re not drug kingpins or DEA agents, nor are they cutely animated Pixar movie characters. They’re as real as fiction can make them, and they remain blissfully unaware.
The dance at Willa’s high school gets raided; restaurants get raided; the meat processing plant gets raided. Anderson’s decision to make the “present” not very different from sixteen years earlier, implies that this type of violence this is merely part of the United States—and it is. The powers and precedents Donald Trump uses were established during George W. Bush’s administration; 1954’s Operation Wetback, the largest mass-deportation in history, was militarized in a way that’s not dissimilar to ICE. One must merely look at history—the right kind of history—to see that these overreaches are endemic, not aberrations. The film’s strength is that, as an action movie, it refuses to sugarcoat its fairly radical politics without preaching: it shows, it moves on, it doesn’t stop.
This section shows that One Battle After Another is far more than an action film. Bob seeks out Willa’s karate teacher, Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro), aka sensei, who, unbeknownst to Bob, also happens to manage an underground railroad of sorts. More hijinks ensue, including another tete-a-tete over the underground radio, a cushionless fall from 40 feet, and a brief stint in jail that ends thanks to some sympathetic people on the inside. (This, like the quaaludes Lambo scene in The Wolf of Wall Street, showcases DiCaprio’s underutilized physical comedic talents and hilarious line deliveries.) The latter are heroes in a small way: a woman providing legal advice, a female nurse in the jail’s medical center. They, like Sergio, embody an everyday type of heroism. Anderson shows it takes community, and not just the bold ranks of the radicals, to keep revolution alive. And thanks to these small yet mighty hands, Bob finally locates Willa.
Their reunion is beset by the perils of Lockjaw, a paternity test, a bounty hunter, Viking-haired Nazis, another professional hitman hired by the Christmas Adventurers Club, and a lengthy yet gripping car chase on a sunbaked southwestern highway. This final run—Willa attempting to outrun Lockjaw, who’s being followed by the hitman, who’s being followed by Bob—is the film’s grandest achievement. A series of point-of-view shots of the hills, combined with the distortion caused by the camera’s lens, creates overwhelming suspense, the top of the hills billowing upwards and obscuring what’s beyond. Willa, a born revolutionary, seizes her birthright by using the hilly road to her advantage—it’s like watching a kid successfully teaching themselves to walk. (On this same stretch of road, Lockjaw also assumes his true form, becoming a red skull—an obvious reference to the Red Skull, the Hitleresque character who battles Captain America.)
Amidst the chaos of this final section of the film, Bob’s love for his daughter, pure yet tinged with regret, permeates the action. Speeding along a stretch of country road with Sergio, Bob explains that he always thought his “old life” would catch up to him when Perfidia appeared, not because their lives would be ripped apart by the feds. He imagined that she would take over mom duties—the girl stuff. “I don’t know how to do her hair right,” he quietly laments. Though Sergio immediately replies, “Don’t go dark on me, Bob,” Bob’s regret hangs in the air. It’s something that parents of biracial children—perhaps Anderson’s father-in-law, perhaps Anderson himself—have experienced. That feeling of being unable to give everything to your child, despite how much you love them, is a universal experience, but the inadequacy of someone in Bob’s situation is a specific, painful thing to carry. It’s one of the many small things that Anderson gives voice to that rarely appears (or is treated seriously) in mainstream cinema. For a film about so many macro-level topics—injustice, activism, history, fear, and political persecution—it’s these small details that enliven One Battle After Another.
During their penultimate exchange, Bob, between nervous vape puffs, tells Willa, “I wanted to be the cool dad you could say anything to, even though it’s impossible.” Leaving behind the trauma of being discovered, of his worst fear being realized, has allowed them to move onto much greater things. It’s a beautiful moment, one almost as perfect as Willa speeding away to Oakland so she can assist fellow radicals while “American Girl” by Tom Petty plays.