One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025)

[mizo]

I haven't yet, but I keep meaning to dive into this Substack that is going chapter by chapter through Mason & Dixon (one of my favorite novels) and previously covered Gravity's Rainbow

[beamish14]

This conversation has tangentially reminded me that I really need to catch up with the source novel Vineland. So I looked it up on Amazon, and was treated to this AI summary of customer reactions:

There are terrific annotations online for all of Pynchon’s works.

Where?

Here you go. I think this material used to be on The Modern Word, which was a great site

[DeprongMori]

I think this material used to be on The Modern Word, which was a great site

The Modern Word was indeed a treasure trove. The Spermatikos Logos portion, which focused on the work of Thomas Pynchon, appears to have been reconstituted and still maintained here.

[MichaelB]

I mean, obviously nobody really likes it, but One Battle After Another has just become the fourth film ever to win the National Society of Film Critics, National Board of Review, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and the New York Film Critics Circle vote for the year's best film. The other three were Schindler's List, L.A. Confidential and The Social Network.

[hearthesilence]

I mean, obviously nobody really likes it, but One Battle After Another has just become the fourth film ever to win the National Society of Film Critics, National Board of Review, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and the New York Film Critics Circle vote for the year's best film. The other three were Schindler's List, L.A. Confidential and The Social Network.

Well, none of those films are MY picks for the best film of their respective years, so CLEARLY these voters have been bought like the whoring shills that they are.

[wattsup32]

I had a friend who I had been encouraging to watch this repeatedly for a while text me today to say the ending was stunningly bad. His explanation was that "They're still revolutionaries, still ostensibly on the run from the government (unless she's joking about going out to do revolutionary things). Her cellphone was almost the death of her (and was the death of literally everyone else) just a couple scenes before. But now everything is hunky dory (because the happy revolutionary is a theme of both history and this film?) and we're all good with that technology?"

I am not sure what to do with this. I don't really know how to engage with analysis like this because it barely engages with the thematic elements of the film or engage the film as an art form. So, I've just replied with something basic and non-committal like "I can see your point" because I don't see value in having an argument about this and I'm certain he would try to make it an argument.

How do you all handle typically handle responses from others like this to films?

[spectre]

I mean, tbh, I had some similar feelings. It helps of course to appreciate that this is clearly not a film that exists in anything resembling the real world – it's a fairytale version of reality in which something like Years of Lead–era Italy has been transposed onto the 21st-century United States. And on those grounds, I can absolutely enjoy it as a thrill ride – particularly the middle section with Benicio del Toro and the extended chase sequence towards the end. It's really masterfully put together and, on a purely aesthetic level, hard to fault. But I don't think internal narrative logic is too much to ask for in a film, and I also found elements of the ending a little too neat given what has been set up before it.

Spoiler

For instance: I get that the "Christmas Adventurers Club" is supposed to be some kind of deep-state organisation pulling the strings of government, but can we really believe that a high-ranking general like Lockjaw could be subjected to an assassination attempt, survive it and then be disappeared again without anyone taking any notice? And even the motivation of the CAC in being so hellbent on killing him didn't make all that much sense, past the basic premise that they're committed to "racial purity" and can't have anyone in there who's breached the T&Cs.

I think that points to why the film ultimately isn't all that politically serious (even if nobody said it needed to be): beyond its armed frontline and shady backrooms, the actual American state apparatus is conspicuously invisible, even if we're invited to imagine all this occurring under the Trump presidency. For all the plaudits this film has been getting from socialist critics, the radicals vs GI Joes set-up does make things a little neat and hermetically sealed and, ultimately (if paradoxically), liberal: there's no sense that the entire framework of the US state needs to be brought down; just fend off the most overtly racist ICE agents and things will return to some kind of equilibrium, in which the excitement of youthful resistance can resume via peaceful protest.

I think this is a common structure in so many have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too films about radical activists: they tend to fetishise the rush of youthful resistance but make sure to leave on a "don't do this at home, kids!" message. That's one reason why, despite its ostensibly post-political outlook, Bresson's The Devil, Probably is still such a rare achievement: that's a film where you really feel the system's hand around your throat in a way that's so breezily shaken off in One Battle After Another.

But PTA can do whatever he likes, of course, and if the primary goal here is fun with some ripped-from-the-headlines political resonance + human drama around parenthood and how ego and self-concept react to a life lived in the past, then that's totally fine. I don't think there's really an answer to the question of how to handle your friend's response to this though because I don't think it's an illegitimate take on the film: some of us respond to films more viscerally than intellectually or vice versa, and where some of us might forgive any number of plot holes so long as we get to experience the magic of film working on all cylinders, others want to see a coherent or challenging idea expressed in depth and feel short-changed if we feel difficult questions have been elided. I think it's just a personal response.

[hearthesilence]

I had a friend who I had been encouraging to watch this repeatedly for a while text me today to say the ending was stunningly bad. His explanation was that "They're still revolutionaries, still ostensibly on the run from the government (unless she's joking about going out to do revolutionary things). Her cellphone was almost the death of her (and was the death of literally everyone else) just a couple scenes before. But now everything is hunky dory (because the happy revolutionary is a theme of both history and this film?) and we're all good with that technology?"

I am not sure what to do with this. I don't really know how to engage with analysis like this because it barely engages with the thematic elements of the film or engage the film as an art form. So, I've just replied with something basic and non-committal like "I can see your point" because I don't see value in having an argument about this and I'm certain he would try to make it an argument.

How do you all handle typically handle responses from others like this to films?

I know a guy who was like this and it was extremely annoying. I can still remember him dismissing 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days because (in his words) the women are stupid people who keep doing stupid things. (Not surprisingly, he turned out to be a chauvinist jackass.)

It depends on the movie, but in this case, I would've said they weren't hounded by the government so much as an obsessed representative of the government, Col. Lockjaw, and once the man that was single-handedly directing government resources into pursuing them was dead, it was no surprise that those efforts faded away for what was likely a pretty low priority in terms of national security.

But do such details really need to be spelled out in an absurd farce? Do they also need to explain how the film's wacky secret cult could possibly wield the influence it had in real world terms? I never thought it did because plot isn't the be-all and end-all element of a movie.

[brundlefly]

I had a friend who I had been encouraging to watch this repeatedly for a while text me today to say the ending was stunningly bad. His explanation was that "They're still revolutionaries, still ostensibly on the run from the government (unless she's joking about going out to do revolutionary things). Her cellphone was almost the death of her (and was the death of literally everyone else) just a couple scenes before. But now everything is hunky dory (because the happy revolutionary is a theme of both history and this film?) and we're all good with that technology?"

I am not sure what to do with this. I don't really know how to engage with analysis like this because it barely engages with the thematic elements of the film or engage the film as an art form. So, I've just replied with something basic and non-committal like "I can see your point" because I don't see value in having an argument about this and I'm certain he would try to make it an argument.

How do you all handle typically handle responses from others like this to films?

Not that you must, but if you do want to counter his sticking point...

Spoiler

Didn't Sensei -- the model for an effective organizer, no? -- have a cellphone? Other than the laugh, wasn't that the point of showing him taking a selfie with Bob, and wasn't the whole point of showing Bob learning to take his own selfie at the end to show that he was trying to re-engage? That growing and evolving and finding safe ways to use new technology was the way to re-engage?

[Zot!]

I similarly agree with your pal that the ending was abrupt and ridiculous, but as others have mentioned, the rest of the film is similarly in a bit of a cartoonish "Hollywood" mold, so take it or leave it. It was mentioned before, but the other big reference point here for me was Terminator 2, which shared a lot of the same themes, and similarly had a "happy ending" despite

Spoiler

Sarah and John Conner probably being held accountable for blowing up millions of dollars worth of commercial real estate, shooting at cops, and all sorts of other malfeasance.

The thematic element from OBAA that I didn't get at the end was more

Spoiler

after they miraculously dodged so many proverbial bullets, why the daughter is being encouraged to actively put herself in harms way as an activist/revolutionary, but I guess in the film's logic, it's about "letting go" as a father, and empowering the next generation, and less to do with a logical construct

[mfunk9786]

I had a friend who I had been encouraging to watch this repeatedly for a while text me today to say the ending was stunningly bad. His explanation was that "They're still revolutionaries, still ostensibly on the run from the government (unless she's joking about going out to do revolutionary things). Her cellphone was almost the death of her (and was the death of literally everyone else) just a couple scenes before. But now everything is hunky dory (because the happy revolutionary is a theme of both history and this film?) and we're all good with that technology?"

I am not sure what to do with this. I don't really know how to engage with analysis like this because it barely engages with the thematic elements of the film or engage the film as an art form. So, I've just replied with something basic and non-committal like "I can see your point" because I don't see value in having an argument about this and I'm certain he would try to make it an argument.

How do you all handle typically handle responses from others like this to films?

The French 75 are not depicted as doing revolution in the 'right way' at any point in the film save for perhaps the opening sequence. Especially in 'present day': focused on the wrong things in a society where surveillance will take place no matter whether they take showy paranoid precautions around it or not. Note how quickly people are pinched when they need to be pinched, found when they need to be found. All the code words and phrases and passwords in the world can't compete with what an organized and cooperative community like Del Toro's can accomplish. That's kind of the whole point of the movie.

[Matt]

The thematic element from OBAA that I didn't get at the end was more

Spoiler

after they miraculously dodged so many proverbial bullets, why the daughter is being encouraged to actively put herself in harms way as an activist/revolutionary, but I guess in the film's logic, it's about "letting go" as a father, and empowering the next generation, and less to do with a logical construct

You know, I hadn't thought about it too much, but it occurs to me now that

Spoiler

it's also about letting Willa become her mother's daughter as much as she has been Bob's daughter. Bob has always been content to be hidden and behind the scenes, whereas Perfidia was always out front and unafraid. But Bob can now see that Willa's more than capable of handling herself. I'm more concerned about, given what her mother did, how she handled her friends narcing on her and, given current events, what happened to all the people Sensei was taking care of that Bob put in danger.

[rrenault]

I know a guy who was like this and it was extremely annoying. I can still remember him dismissing 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days because (in his words) the women are stupid people who keep doing stupid things. (Not surprisingly, he turned out to be a chauvinist jackass.)

It depends on the movie, but in this case, I would've said they weren't hounded by the government so much as an obsessed representative of the government, Col. Lockjaw, and once the man that was single-handedly directing government resources into pursuing them was dead, it was no surprise that those efforts faded away for what was likely a pretty low priority in terms of national security.

But do such details really need to be spelled out in an absurd farce? Do they also need to explain how the film's wacky secret cult could possibly wield the influence it had in real world terms? I never thought it did because plot isn't the be-all and end-all element of a movie.

I like 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days myself, but I know there are some people who oppose its lionization and that of the Romanian New Wave in general on moral grounds, because they see the praise of the movement as a hypocritical Western bourgeois liberal exercise in decrying "the horrors of Communism".

For certain cinephiles, it may be hard to reconcile praise for seemingly anti-communist liberal-friendly cinema from former Eastern block countries with admiration for so much of the left-leaning anti-bourgeois cinema from Western European countries like France and Italy (Godard, Pasolini, Buñuel, etc).

[knives]

And those cinephiles are merely unable to chew gum and walk at the same time. You can be left wing or even just enjoy left wing works while also recognizing that life in the eastern bloc was often awful and cruel.

[MichaelB]

I like 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days myself, but I know there are some people who oppose its lionization and that of the Romanian New Wave in general on moral grounds, because they see the praise of the movement as a hypocritical Western bourgeois liberal exercise in decrying "the horrors of Communism".

Or, rather more accurately, decrying the horrors of a single specific policy from 1980s Romania. The rest is pure projection.

Not least because Romania was highly unusual amongst the eastern bloc states in its criminalisation of abortion; in many other countries it was perfectly legal. Poland being a particularly interesting case in point, as it was so easy to get abortions there during the Communist era that women from more restrictive countries like Sweden would travel there for that specific purpose, much as generations of Irishwomen would until recently take the ferry to Liverpool.

And given how draconian Polish abortion policies have been post-1993, you could conceivably make a Polish remake of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days set in the present day.

For certain cinephiles, it may be hard to reconcile praise for seemingly anti-communist liberal-friendly cinema from former Eastern block countries with admiration for so much of the left-leaning anti-bourgeois cinema from Western European countries like France and Italy (Godard, Pasolini, Buñuel, etc).

I'm glad you said "seemingly", because of course a very annoying tendency in Western criticism of eastern bloc films is to assume that they're anti-Communist, even though there may be no actual evidence within the film itself and no intention on the part of the filmmaker in that direction. And plenty of great eastern European filmmakers were ardent Communists—Miklós Jancsó and Andrzej Munk being cases in point.

[rrenault]

Wajda was maybe the one canonized Eastern bloc director who was avowedly anti-communist.

Even the films of Kieslowski and Tarkovsky don't really "attack communism" as such, even if their themes are often Christian-coded.

And Kalatozov was another one who of course was in fact quite pro-communist.

One thing I will say is in contrast to the more outwardly anti-bourgeois orientation, and therefore implied leftwing sympathies, of a lot of Cold War-era Western European cinema, such as that of Godard, Pasolini, Antonioni, Buñuel, etc. much of Eastern bloc cinema from the same period tends to have a more mystical/spiritual orientation, which makes it vulnerable to being interpreted as Christian, and therefore 'reactionary'. Dekalog, which is from the tale end of the Cold War, granted, is inspired by the Ten Commandments after all.

[MichaelB]

Out of the internationally famous ones, Miloš Forman and Roman Polanski were among the most ardently anti-Communist, but they primarily expressed this in the form of getting out of Czechoslovakia/Poland as soon as they had the chance.

But even Forman's Czech films don't have much in the way of anti-Communist political messages. I daresay there's the social engineering that produced the situation in A Blonde in Love whereby the local female:male ratio is fifteen to one, but there's really not much else—and even that’s more the result of a particular female-dominated local industry, so could conceivably be transplanted elsewhere. The government was convinced that The Firemen's Ball was an anti-Communist allegory (the reason why the film was subsequently "banned for ever", or at least until the Velvet Revolution in 1989), but Forman always strongly denied it—he and his co-writers happened to be staying in a hotel where a real firemen's ball was taking place, and were mesmerised by the chaos, and firemen subsequently endorsed the film's observational accuracy.

And Wajda was always very annoyed when people simplistically read Danton as an allegory of then-recent Polish history, with Danton standing in for Lech Wałęsa and Robesperre being General Jaruzelski. As Wadja pointed out, reasonably and with supporting evidence, it was based on a play by Stanisława Przybyszewska that was written years before Wałęsa was even born, which he'd already staged in Poland long before the Solidarity ructions broke out—indeed, a full half-decade before Solidarity was even founded.

[Zot!]

You can be left wing or even just enjoy left wing works while also recognizing that life in the eastern bloc was often awful and cruel.

I say this as a regular visitor and child of immigrants from an Eastern Bloc country, but like most places it was also often the opposite. Incredible maternity leave that even Scandinavian countries can only dream of....I'm talking years with no concern about job security. As Michael also mentioned religious and moral objections were also typically swept aside by the communist ethos in favor of hard science for better and worse. But sure, there was a queue for telephone service and buying a 2-stroke automobile, and you could only find bootleg star wars figures.

I didn't think much of 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days myself, as it was a little too much in the agitprop sensationalist category, and I don't really enjoy a scolding, even if I agree with the general thrust. For my money, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and Police, Adjective are more representative of the typical bureaucratic malaise and depressing conditions that seem to perpetually plague the the proletariat.

[rrenault]

I'm glad you said "seemingly", because of course a very annoying tendency in Western criticism of eastern bloc films is to assume that they're anti-Communist, even though there may be no actual evidence within the film itself and no intention on the part of the filmmaker in that direction. And plenty of great eastern European filmmakers were ardent Communists—Miklós Jancsó and Andrzej Munk being cases in point.

I'd say this tendency to project anti-communist sympathies onto eastern bloc works extends to other art forms, as well. See how certain Western leftists react whenever someone from a former Warsaw Pact country wins the Nobel Prize in Literature, whether Krasznahorkai or Alexievitch.

Certainly you do have writers like Mario Vargas Llosa, not Eastern European of course, who are patently right wing.

[MichaelB]

I say this as a regular visitor and child of immigrants from an Eastern Bloc country, but like most places it was also often the opposite. Incredible maternity leave that even Scandinavian countries can only dream of....I'm talking years with no concern about job security. As Michael also mentioned religious and moral objections were also typically swept aside by the communist ethos in favor of hard science for better and worse. But sure, there was a queue for telephone service and buying a 2-stroke automobile, and you could only find bootleg star wars figures.

We tended to keep rather quiet about the economic ravages of the 1990s that followed the collapse of Communism, because we preferred to maintain the fiction that a switch was flicked and Communist countries magically turned into liberal democracies overnight. But it's not at all hard to see why millions of people felt nostalgic for that time, because for all their new-found freedoms (although in quite a few cases they weren't especially meaningful ones) they also lost things that they'd previously taken for granted.

My first Czech teacher came over to London in the first place because he was increasingly disillusioned about what was happening in what was then still Czechoslovakia and wanted to see what it looked like from an international perspective. Whereupon he swiftly discovered that it was barely visible from an international perspective, because the media had moved on from the Velvet Revolution and was concentrating on the former Yugoslavia instead; it's much easier to cover civil war than stories about the transition from communism to democracy not being as smooth as hoped. (And the Czechs did better than most, especially when they split from Slovakia in 1993.)

[knives]

You can be left wing or even just enjoy left wing works while also recognizing that life in the eastern bloc was often awful and cruel.

I say this as a regular visitor and child of immigrants from an Eastern Bloc country, but like most places it was also often the opposite. Incredible maternity leave that even Scandinavian countries can only dream of....I'm talking years with no concern about job security. As Michael also mentioned religious and moral objections were also typically swept aside by the communist ethos in favor of hard science for better and worse. But sure, there was a queue for telephone service and buying a 2-stroke automobile, and you could only find bootleg star wars figures.

I didn't think much of 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days myself, as it was a little too much in the agitprop sensationalist category, and I don't really enjoy a scolding, even if I agree with the general thrust. For my money, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and Police, Adjective are more representative of the typical bureaucratic malaise and depressing conditions that seem to perpetually plague the the proletariat.

Without question. I was actually considering mentioning that I have family from Romania and in fact that still live there with a deep love of the place and their experiences at the time. My use of often was intended as a caveat to highlight that it was also often very good (and likely just normal most of the time).

Like, on one hand my aunt’s mother had her doctor license taken away from her in the ‘60s or ‘70s for political reasons and on the other my aunt discusses her school life was such a deep pleasure. No existence is monochromatic.

Which gets to my point that criticism of the failings of a thing does not mean the rejection of that thing let alone related things which OP was insinuating. You can admire the political messaging of Vertov while also recognizing that era of Soviet Russia as one with many things to be critical of and it is not a contradiction to find a work of art bringing up those criticisms meaningful or true.

Hell, as a fan of Paul Morrissey and Ditko, I find I can even vehemently disagree with a work’s messaging and still find meaning and truth to them.

[Dollyartasia8800]

You can be left wing or even just enjoy left wing works while also recognizing that life in the eastern bloc was often awful and cruel.

I say this as a regular visitor and child of immigrants from an Eastern Bloc country, but like most places it was also often the opposite. Incredible maternity leave that even Scandinavian countries can only dream of....I'm talking years with no concern about job security. As Michael also mentioned religious and moral objections were also typically swept aside by the communist ethos in favor of hard science for better and worse. But sure, there was a queue for telephone service and buying a 2-stroke automobile, and you could only find bootleg star wars figures.

I didn't think much of 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days myself, as it was a little too much in the agitprop sensationalist category, and I don't really enjoy a scolding, even if I agree with the general thrust. For my money, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and Police, Adjective are more representative of the typical bureaucratic malaise and depressing conditions that seem to perpetually plague the the proletariat.

Without question. I was actually considering mentioning that I have family from Romania and in fact that still live there with a deep love of the place and their experiences at the time. My use of often was intended as a caveat to highlight that it was also often very good (and likely just normal most of the time).

Like, on one hand my aunt’s mother had her doctor license taken away from her in the ‘60s or ‘70s for political reasons and on the other my aunt discusses her school life was such a deep pleasure. No existence is monochromatic.

Which gets to my point that criticism of the failings of a thing does not mean the rejection of that thing let alone related things which OP was insinuating. You can admire the political messaging of Vertov while also recognizing that era of Soviet Russia as one with many things to be critical of and it is not a contradiction to find a work of art bringing up those criticisms meaningful or true.

Hell, as a fan of Paul Morrissey and Ditko, I find I can even vehemently disagree with a work’s messaging and still find meaning and truth to them.

I concur with you. History and life are rarely entirely positive or negative. It is possible for people to experience both positive recollections and actual injury at the same moment. It's not necessary to reject everything in order to point out issues. Even if you disagree with the meaning of a piece of art, you might still discover value or truth in it. I don't see a contradiction in it.

[untitled]

This conversation has tangentially reminded me that I really need to catch up with the source novel Vineland. So I looked it up on Amazon, and was treated to this AI summary of customer reactions:

Customers find the book very funny. However, the readability receives mixed reactions, with some describing it as unreadable gabble.

A few months ago I decided to read Vineland prior to seeing the film for a few reasons: I always prefer to read the book prior to a movie. Don't always do it but almost always wish I had. Also, PTA's adaptation of Inherent Vice was so true to the book and I loved both. So I bought the book and started. And started. And continued to start. Halfway through I was in the place where I'm trying to remember who's who and what the hell is even going on. I didn't feel compelled enough to finish it. Then when I saw the movie I thought, "Holy shit! He did it." Somehow PTA distilled that novel into something I kinda sensed was happening but didn't really get from the page. I take complete blame for this--not pointing at Pynchon at all. My reading habits and skills aren't what they once were. But I was highly impressed with the movie. In fact, I felt the blurbs that said OBAA is "loosely based on Thomas Pynchon's novel Vineland are mistaken. I think it really tightened up the novel in film form. My 2 cents.

[Noiretirc]

This conversation has tangentially reminded me that I really need to catch up with the source novel Vineland. So I looked it up on Amazon, and was treated to this AI summary of customer reactions:

Customers find the book very funny. However, the readability receives mixed reactions, with some describing it as unreadable gabble.

A few months ago I decided to read Vineland prior to seeing the film for a few reasons: I always prefer to read the book prior to a movie. Don't always do it but almost always wish I had. Also, PTA's adaptation of Inherent Vice was so true to the book and I loved both. So I bought the book and started. And started. And continued to start. Halfway through I was in the place where I'm trying to remember who's who and what the hell is even going on. I didn't feel compelled enough to finish it. Then when I saw the movie I thought, "Holy shit! He did it." Somehow PTA distilled that novel into something I kinda sensed was happening but didn't really get from the page. I take complete blame for this--not pointing at Pynchon at all. My reading habits and skills aren't what they once were. But I was highly impressed with the movie. In fact, I felt the blurbs that said OBAA is "loosely based on Thomas Pynchon's novel Vineland are mistaken. I think it really tightened up the novel in film form. My 2 cents.

I love this 2 cents, thanks. The book might form my Coles Notes for the film!

I finally got around to this (bluray) tonight. I feasted upon the first half only. (Because that's how I am.) But devouring this dense / dizzying thing will require much more time.

My criminally embryotic thoughts: How brilliant that a 2025 adaptation of a 1990 book feels so timely and relevant in early 2026!? (Is Sean Penn = that crazy fuck Bovino?!) I feel like I'm watching CNN at times. Is this Anderson's most "present" film?

The second half might bring forth a more coherent review from me. I apologize for this premature indulgence.

[MichaelB]

A few months ago I decided to read Vineland prior to seeing the film for a few reasons: I always prefer to read the book prior to a movie. Don't always do it but almost always wish I had.

I pretty much never do this, unless I happen to have read the book already—seriously, isn't that more likely to hobble appreciation of a film as an individual work of art in its own right than anything else?

If I have time when writing something professionally, I sometimes watch the film, read the book, and then watch the film again, but I don't think I've ever felt compelled to read the book just because a film adaptation is coming out.