One Battle After Another

I don’t care to have the attention span for movies, preferring short form articles and video, like the rest of us. I keep favorite series ongoing for a juicy fictional deep dive, breaking up long stories into episodes suits my full life.

So when I saw the first whispers of “One Battle After Another,” I was largely disinterested, dismissing what appeared a largely macho cast with a storyline to match. However Paul Thomas Anderson is a force I can get behind, and when I heard this was his project I ratcheted up my interest enough to be seduced if the unlikely opportunity presented itself.

However, the opportunity did present itself in the form of bestie and entertainment journal ElizaBeth Taylor, who had procured us a pair of tickets via her SGA membership.

Let me tell you I was astounded! This is precisely why I love art, it has an uncanny a priori way of filtering reality through its executors, in Anderson’s case a wide angle lens. It is a timely tale of American resistance and authoritarianism as well as its revolution cultural blend.

In Boogie Nights, my all time number on fave film, I saw the freedom and the curse of sexual liberation for women. Matriarchal themes are woven throughout. In OBAA, it is the twin fathers of darkness and light, of blood and duty that are cast in stark contrast. As always in Anderson’s fair brutality, women from maiden to mother are examined, but more as exclamation points to these pointed masculine commentaries on display throughout the two hours and forty minutes.

Today is voting day across the united states, and up until I saw this film, I was unsettled. One Battle After Another awakened me from my fretful imaginings and I rally to its emotional righteousness with all my heart.