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You by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. This is Critics at Large, a podcast from the New Yorker. I'm Nomi Frye.
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I'm Vincent Cunningham.
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And I'm Alex Schwartz. Each week on this show we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. Hello critics.
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Hello Alex Lilly, hello tis I.
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What's up?
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Well, today I have three words for you. Paul Thomas Anderson. Duh duh duh duh duh. Metal PTA is back. Paul Thomas Anderson. We are talking about the prolific and, dare I say it, beloved writer director. This man is 55. He's been making movies since his 20s and PTA, I would say his work is hard to pin down. He loves to time travel. He's taken us from the early 20th century oil fields in the west to the 1970s San Fernando Valley suburbs to a 1950s London fashion house. And there's always something interesting and very ambitious about his films. When I perk right up, when I know new PTAs is coming down the pike and that is certainly true of his new film, One Battle After Another. This is Bob Ferguson. I was a part of the French 75. Steve Lockjaw just attacked my home and.
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I cannot remember for the life of.
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My only child the answer to your question.
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Maybe you should have studied the rebellion.
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Text a little harder. One Battle After Another is loosely based on the 1990 Thomas Pynchon novel Vineland. And it's Paul Thomas Anderson's second, second Pynchon adaptation after his movie Inherent Vice, which came out in 2014. It's got a big, bold ensemble cast. It has Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Teyana Taylor, Regina hall, and newcomer splendidly named Chase Infinity. And I just want to say right at the top, it's also, and I think this will be significant for us, it's Paul Thomas Anderson's most expensive movie by far. Its budget is rumored to be somewhere between, I think, 135 and $170 million. Warner Brothers put up the money for this movie. This is a very interesting fact to me, which I know we will be discussing. And we are going to get all into it to talk about the film and what we thought. But as a teaser, I'm wondering Nomi and Vinson. Guys, give me a one line review. Make it punchy, make it quick, make it as quick as this movie is. Unquick. It's a rare movie.
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Violent, fun, pretty good, ultimately overhyped.
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Classic Fry. Take that. I love.
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Oh my God, I'm such a hater. I'm sorry.
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Never apologize.
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I still love you. Pta.
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We're gonna expand on these today. Oh yes. When we talk about One Battle After Another. And we're gonna also be talking about just the work of Paul Thomas Anderson. We're gonna talk about our favorite films of his and some that never quite did it for us. And I just wanna point out one thing that I find very interesting about One Battle After Another, which is that it is the first of PTA's movies in more than two decades that is set in the present. And what a present it is. This is a big budget movie about leftist radicals and a powerful cabal of white supremacists. It's also an intimate family movie that is focused on the complications and the bonds of parental love. And Paul Thomas Anderson is director who is fascinated by the way that people exploit and try to control one another. But here I think he's also trying to understand what it means for people to care about each other too. And these are all questions that are both timeless in the way of a big, ambitious movie and very much of our time. And the big question I have for us is, does Paul Thomas Anderson meet the moment that's today on Critics at Large? One PTA film after another. All right, this is a long, twisty and turny movie. It is almost three hours long. A lot happens. So just to start, who wants to explain the most basic premise of one battle after another?
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One battle after another begins in the world of a sort of multicultural, multiracial cell of political revolutionaries called the French 75. They are sort of the Sly and the Family Stone of domestic terrorism. Among them are Leonardo DiCaprio as Ghetto Pat is the first kind of moniker under which we know him, and Teyana Taylor as Perfidia Beverly Hills. They're sort of the ones that we get to know earlier in this early sort of collaged montage of their exploits. They're freeing what looks like some sort of ice enclosure of migrants who have been put into some awful situation. They're robbing banks. They're doing all kinds of things to express their sort of political malcontent. And it all falls apart. There's a sort of botched bank robbery that lands the Teyana Taylor character in jail. And basically she's apprehended and we're given to know, kind of like rats on everybody. And they all split up across the country. Everybody has to go into some form of anonymized life. And then we come to know right before all that happens that Teyana Taylor and Leonardo DiCaprio have, we think, had a child together. So we go into the weird life of Leonardo DiCaprio and that child who is played, as you mentioned, by Chase Infinity, who was great and presumed innocent and is really good in this. And they are living this weird father daughter life under other names, Bob and Willa Ferguson. And then trouble comes again. And the trouble comes in the figure of Sean Penn as Colonel Stephen J. Lockjaw. He was in love with Teyana Taylor, and he's also trying to gain membership in some weird white supremacist group called the Christmas Adventurers. So he's come back with a vengeance. And all of a sudden this group of former revolutionaries is in trouble. And navigating the sort of recrudescence of the past is the real meat of this film.
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Beautiful job. An absolutely beautiful job in a hard situation. We're talking about 2 hours and 50 minutes of nonstop action. Nomi, you intrigued me with your initial review. Tell us what you thought.
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Okay. I think it's hard for me to completely extricate my response to the movie from my expectations of the movie, which were, whether by professional writers or just like movie fans, PTA fans specifically. Everything I was experiencing related to this movie was saying that this is a masterpiece like no other. The only great movie so far for the 21st century, you know, on and on. I mean, I'm not even exaggerating, you know, I definitely. I was seeing that form of take again and again. And so I think there's a lot of stuff I liked about this movie. I think there are some amazing performances. I think it's gorgeously shot. I think it's action packed in a thrilling way. But ultimately I felt unsatisfied by its politics. And I felt. I think, which is something that I occasionally feel with PTA in general, confused by the transition between different scales of it. The kind of, like, grand scale of, like, shootouts, chases, you know, action sequences, like across Hill and Dale, you know, like the grand expanse of California and the west and hundreds and thousands of extras, you know, being shunted hither and thither, you know, across the screen. And on the other hand, the. The kind of like more quiet, more minor relationality between characters. Each of these things might have worked for me in and of itself, but the transition between them was confusing. Like, I felt like it didn't totally work for me. And I'm willing to speak more specifically about certain scenes if we would like to do so in the future. But that's just generally, if we would.
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Like to do so. There's nothing I would like to do more than that.
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Yeah.
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Before we do, though, I wanna know, Vinson, what you thought.
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I thought that in a very straightforward sense, this movie kind of rocked. It was just fun to watch. It is loud, it has great music. There are two important car chases. One, the one that ends with the capture of the Teyana Taylor character. Perfidia, Beverly Hills. And then one that comes. And it's kind of really the climax of the film. And in this movie, the cars feel fast, but also heavy. It's clear that they're not made for this use to be driven this fast and pushed this hard. And there's something about the extremity of the situations that maybe the car chases as a metaphor for just extremity that I really liked. It seems to me to be a movie about fetishes. It just takes things that Americans know to be uncomfortable about. And it's like, that's what it's about. So the whole first part that's ostensibly about this political Violence. These revolutionaries. There's a scene where, you know, Leo is in the back of a car with Teyana Taylor, and they're kind of making out. This is when we first know that they're lovers. And she's like, oh, you like black girls? He's like, of course I like black girls. Why do you think I'm here? You know, it's like this sort of. All of a sudden, the. The sort of interracial, sort of miscegenating gaze is the point. And then Sean Penn later on, after having his initial encounter with Teyana Taylor, is looking at her through the scope of a gun and then notices Leo and then sees them. First Leo's grabbing her ass. A lot is made of her ass. It's like this very objectifying, on purpose view. And then they kiss. And he's like. You see him get mad and he has an encounter with Leo later on, and he's like, you like black girls? I love black girls. It's like it seemed to be. Maybe it is a political movie, but not political in terms of current events or ideologies, but more political in terms of deep, almost like libidinal things that we all share that the movie wants to peck out one by one. So I admired it. I did hear the same things that you heard, though, Naomi. Like, it's the best. And I'm like, it's not better than the Wolf of Wall Street. It's not better than a lot of movies from recent movies that I could think of. But I did really enjoy it.
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Mm. Okay, Alex, I can't wait to hear your words, your wise words.
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Well, I love hearing what both of you are saying. I also wanna say I need to see this movie again. Immediately upon seeing it, I was like, must rewatch. Now that I kind of know how PTAs laying it down, I need to absorb it. One thing I wanna say is, my God, what a filmmaker. The hours simply fly by faster than the cars that Vincent was just mentioning. The hours just keel by the entire first. I would say half of this movie is just a montage of this radical group setting off explosions, raiding this immigration detention center. Let's just take a moment to acknowledge that a big Hollywood movie is going right off the bat and saying, let's just depict an aspect of the American present that you're used to seeing on the news or ignoring. And let's just put it right in the heart of an action thriller. So there's that. Nomi, you talked about this mixing of registers. I found that to be fascinating. Too. And I think a lot of the movie is about trying to make reality and fantasy gel. And the difficulty of that and the danger of trying to do it and the beauty of trying to do it at the same times. Suddenly you've gone from this incredible montage where it's beyond action movie. It actually almost is kind of like a video game. It's all stitched together by the music. And of course we have Johnny Greenwood's score. He's collaborating again with Paul Thomas Anderson to score this film. And so you've had this shoot em up situation, you've had ass grabbing, you've had fucking, you've had this incredible humiliation scene. You have all of this and then suddenly you're in reality because a baby has arrived and the mother of that baby is sad and feels neglected and feels alone. When she was pregnant, she was shooting off a huge machine gun with her nine month pregnant belly, which is I think maybe one of this movie's most distinctive images.
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Yes.
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And suddenly she doesn't know what her role is. She's being told what her purpose is and she doesn't like it and she's chafing against it. And I was like, oh, that's real. Then you cut ahead to the most of the movies present, which is some 15 years later and reality has really set in. Leo, who's now known as Bob, is this stoner X radical dude who doesn't really know if it's day or night. And he and his daughter, who's very cool, who has it together, who studies karate, they live in this very isolated way in the Northern California hills. And I think again, reality and fantasy start to bleed. And of course like the whole white supremacist angle, the Sean Penn character, the Lockjaw character is also about fantasy. The fantasy, first of all of purity of like the classic white supremacist fantasy. That there is such a thing as race, that there is such a thing as racial purity and that it can be achieved forcibly, you know, by you. And he wants to be accepted, he wants to be in. And so he starts off this like whole cuckoo chase that takes us like we should just talk, I think for a second about the tone of this movie. It's all over the place.
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It's all over the place in a.
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Way that I kind of enjoyed. Like it's very funny. Parts of this film are very funny. Leo's performance is hilarious. He's running around in a bathrobe and like wraparound shades, just stumbling and bumbling and trying to figure his stuff out. But like Nomi, you said you had questions about the film's politics, and I'm curious what you mean by it.
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To me, the movie was seemingly about this present moment, but it's based or inspired by, I guess, Pynchon's Vineland, published in 1990, but is set in 1984 and is about this sort of burnout hippie Zoid Wheeler, who, much like Leo's character in the movie, is kind of hiding out in Northern California town. We call it Vineland in the novel. And it's sort of like he's in the Reagan 80s. And it's looking retrospectively to the kind of, like, dashed idealism of the 60s, right? And PTA has. Has taken this kind of matrix and imported it into the present. And it seemed to me entirely anachronistic. I was like, what is this revolutionary group called? The French 75, no less. You know, kind of like Weather Underground style kind of cell. And, you know, the Sly and the Family Stone thing. Vincent, that you mentioned is on point, I guess, because where the movie seems to be happening to me is kind of like the early 70s, you know, the sort of, like, the ideals of the 60s leading to sort of, like, violent action, you know, disillusionment with, like, peace and love. And then cut to something like the 80s, where all of that is kind of like in the past, and all you can do is just smoke weed on the couch, right? And I was like, in what world is this happening? Obviously, it represents the present moment in the sense, of course, like the migrant crisis, the ice and so on. But I was like, this feels completely artificially imported into a moment in which this kind of action is really not the lingua franca. You know, it's like, sorry, I'm not buying, like, Leo and Teyana Taylor as, like, revolutionaries working in a 2010 political cell. Like, what? I find it a little bit like chafing when people are like, finally, he's facing what America is facing. I'm like, is he? I mean, I did feel the white supremacy part, which is, you know, the kind of, like, Christmas adventures.
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The Christmas Adventurers.
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The Christmas Adventurers. Another cult. You know, the kind of, like, far right white supremacist cult that Sean Penn, as Colonel Lockjaw is trying to make his way into. That seemed to be, to me, very relevant and a very good satire of things that I feel like are actually happening in the culture right now. Of course, it's, like, overblown, over the top. It's funny. It's et cetera. But that seemed to me relevant to politics right now and like an answer to something that is, like, you know, actually happening.
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One of my favorite things about this movie is, like, someone from that group is dispatched to do a job. We won't talk too much about it because it might be a little spoilery, but as he does this job, he's in a car. He's driving a car real fast, which is great. As aforementioned, he is wearing a bright red Lacoste shirt. For those that don't know the brand Lacoste, it's like sort of a preppy brand that made a sort of version of the polo shirt, except it's got an alligator on it, but it was like bright red thing that sort of melds preppy heritage America with the kitsch of contemporary fascism. It was like a genteel MAGA hat. And I was like, this filmmaker did not make that mistake. That's a reference. This guy is wearing a MAGA hat, but he's also descended from the Mayflower. And something about that is one of the other absurdities of our moment. The sort of garish extremities to which a formerly sort of genteel elite have sort of bended themselves toward in fealty to Trump. I'm like, that's about fucking Trump. Okay, I'm sorry. And I liked the way some of these jokes had a sort of far out valence, but were also right on the nose. I felt that shirt was one of the better jokes in the movie.
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I thought, I hear you. And I had many of the same feelings. I think our present reality has far outstripped most depictions of it. And we're in a place that's very, very, very extreme. But is putting a version, a weird, twisted, very cinematic version of it, slipping it into this kind of caper, is that delivering us to somewhere that, you know, gets people to think or to look or to feel like. This is a question I have. There's a great character I love in this movie played by Benicio Del Toro, called Sensei, who runs the martial arts studio where teenage Willa studies. And he's just fantastic. And he's doing a. He calls it a kind of Latino Harriet Tubman thing with a bunch of undocumented people. He's hiding them in this apartment complex where he lives and has a kind of route to get them in and out. So I was like, please, I would like to know more about you and watch that.
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Yeah. But I do want to say about this revolutionary violence thing, one of the benefits of working on the broad level of, like, libido and archetype is sometimes you catch the present very much in your net. And the whole time I was watching this movie, I was thinking about the fact that last week Assata Shakur died, who was a member of the Black Liberation army, which was inspired, like the French 75, in part by the Algerian independence movement. At one point, Leo was watching the movie the Battle of Algiers. And I don't know if PTA was thinking about Assata, but the Teyana Taylor character, I mean, there are some big similarities. The bla, they bombed government facilities, they did bank robberies, they did all this kind of stuff. Assata was convicted for the murder of a New Jersey state trooper, I believe, went to prison, escaped from prison with the help of the BLA and other organizations and left and went to Cuba and was died free. I mean, in a certain way, the Tiana Tarrell character is kind of like an unserious Assata Shakur.
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In a minute. How does one battle after another fit into Paul Thomas Anderson's filmography? This is critics at large from the New Yorker. Don't go lights, camera, fashion.
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This year, Vogue World is heading to Hollywood. The scene, the legendary Paramount Pictures Studios lot.
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The plot.
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Cinema's most iconic costumes meet fashion's biggest designers.
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Think Edward Scissorhands tailoring and Marie Antoinette Opulence. It's drama, it's decadence. It's a costume department come to life. The countdown starts now. Learn more about the livestream event of the season@vogueworld.com and cut.
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This show is supported by Odoo.
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Listeners, we've got to ask you something. Actually, two things.
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First, we're still looking for your cultural questions to answer on an upcoming I need a Critic.
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But also, it's now October. Spooky season to some.
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Ooh.
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And we're plotting an episode about horror.
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Indeed. So if you're a lover of horror, we'd love to know why. What are some of your favorites in the genre and what keeps you coming back?
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Or maybe you're a hater. If so, same deal Tell us why. Or if you have a question about horror, hit us up.
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We'll take both cultural questions and horror takes@themailewyorker.com hope to hear from you soon.
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So we've been talking about one battle after another, and I think there's still a lot more to say about it and to digest there. But I do want to turn us to some other PTA films that we've loved because this man casts a long shadow. Know me, I'm going right to you. I know that you love Boogie nights, which is PTA's second feature, certainly his breakout. Tell us all about it.
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To me, Boogie Nights is a perfect movie for me. Like, he's never reached the heights that he reached in Boogie Nights. And just as a synopsis, this is about Paul Thomas Anderson's home environment. It's about the San Fernando valley in the 1970s. Eddie Adams, a young dishwasher at a kind of a club, a disco club in the Valley in the late 70s, is discovered by this porn director and producer played by Burt Reynolds, because he hears that Eddie has an especially large member. Eddie turns into Dirk Diggler, his nom. The plume nom. The Dick nom. Da Dick, Yes. And rises in the porn industry, which is kind of like at the point at which the movie begins, a kind of like, still filmed rather than videotaped is kind of like, still enjoys the kind of like free love, kind of fun in the sun, communal, I guess, ethos of the 60s. And Dirk Diggler becomes a big star in more and more ways than one.
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I just want a name.
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I want it so we can cut.
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Glass, you know, like razor sharp.
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Razor sharp, right.
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Yeah.
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Well, when I close my eyes, I see this thing. It's like this big sign and the.
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Name is in like bright blue neon lights with like purple outline. And this name is just so bright and so sharp that the sign, it.
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Just blows up because the name is just so powerful.
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And the movie is kind of like split in two. There's like. The first half of it is about the rise of Eddie and is kind of like sunny, optimistic, progressive vision. And then the second half of the movie is the 80s, where things begin to go dark. And it's about the fall of Dirk with a kind of like optimistic, slight rise at the end, potentially. And this movie is so perfect to me because everything is exactly calibrated, scale wise. It has a large ensemble cast, it's long, it's quite plot heavy, but it doesn't forget about character and about relationships and the scale of it is calibrated exactly for kind of like coherence, satisfaction and enjoyment. The performances are amazing. It's a very satisfying movie. And it's a movie that makes a statement about culture, about America, about society, about. About a certain point in American life. And in that sense, it's political. I mean, not political with a small P, I guess, not large P. Like.
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I think it's Dirk Digler who has a large P. Yeah.
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Yes, it's true, he does. That's the large P of the movie. But it's also about people. And I don't think any side of this equation between kind of like a larger statement and relationships, say, or characters. None of these sides is a loser in the equation.
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Perfectly calibrated, I think I like Billy Nights also because it really inaugurates. The thing that I think is undersung about PTA is that he's also a very silly comedian. All the moments when Dirk drops his pants and it looks like the Holy Grail has arrived.
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Dad is an enormous cock.
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In one battle after another. Somebody says, you know, I believe she was a sperm thief. And another guy says, a semen demon.
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A semen demon. I think that all day today.
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He likes silly jokes, but grounds them in this way that I think you're totally like, he's got a high school boy in him, but uses it to sort of get us closer and closer to understanding character and plot and situation.
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Yeah.
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And I think Boogie Nights is like the example par excellence of that impulse. Yeah.
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Well, Vincent, is there a Paul Thomas Anderson movie that you particularly like?
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I love the Master.
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Ooh, I like the Master too.
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I like the Master. Joaquin Phoenix, as a troubled military vet who, by hook and crook, falls under the influence of, to me, a resplendent Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is, we're given to understand, a kind of stand in for L. Ron Hubbard. It's kind of about the sort of genesis of Scientology, and it uses the situation where, you know, the person is kind of undergoing these psychological rigors in a one on one session with the administer of this kind of whatever as a kind of like dialectical exercise. It's really about these two people and a spiritual psychological struggle of dominance and, like, mastership. Do you often think about how inconsequential you are?
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Yes.
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Do you believe that God will save you?
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No. Have you ever had sex with a.
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Member of your family?
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Yes.
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Are you lying?
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No.
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Are you lying? No. Are you a liar? Yes. Have you killed anyone?
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Yes.
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Who? It's like, again, beautifully shot. Every time I think about this movie, I think about the multiple shots of them in a boat. Just a picture of the turbulent wake of the boat. And in a similar way, the relationship between these two men is like, got a sweet edge and a totally dementedly violent edge. And it's among my favorite performances of these. Both Phoenix and Hoffman rip. And I think that's a thing that happens a lot, which is PTA is really good at bringing out the best in an already superlative performer. To keep bringing this back to one battle after another, this is the movie that helped me realize. Oh, yeah. Oh, wait. Leo DiCaprio has kind of all always been one of my favorite actors. If I had made the list, he wouldn't have made it. But it's only because he's like water.
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I was gonna say cause he's like water. Cause you take him for granted. No, he's amazing. Is life giving.
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Leo's amazing.
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I'm here for it.
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He's an epic actor. Sometimes people talk about actors as storytellers and sometimes they're like, whatever. But Leo actually is. When I see him, I'm like, yeah, I'll watch this movie for four hours. Cause I know he's gonna change. We're gonna see him now, and then 10 years from now, his face is gonna be more weathered, but we're gonna see the spark of the former. All that shit. And similarly, the two men and the Master go on that kind of epic journey. We talk about ambition, you know, just the sort of chronology of long change over time is something that the Master to me has in common with one battle after another. And I really appreciate it.
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You're making me. When you mention Philip Seymour Hoffman. I think, you know, one of the. One of the things that I love about Paul Thomas Anderson's filmography is that you can see those changes in Philip Seymour Hoffman over time. Because he was a performer who Paul Thomas Anderson worked with so often from the start. Yeah, you know, you talk about the humor of Paul Thomas Anderson, which is such a key, like, in a way you can kind of divide the movies up. And then I think something maybe like one battle after another is trying to combine some of these qualities that Paul Thomas Anderson has. Like you have funny, like movies where he's just letting his kind of off kilter humor really lead. Like Punch Drunk Love is a great example of that from 2002 with Adam Sandler. Like, he went and he made an Adam Sandler movie and he like. I really think that's what he wanted to do. He wanted to give us An Adam Sandler movie, but to make the Adam Sandler character as dark and sad, but also beautiful. As we know, Adam Sandler can be another undersung actor who is like water, who's like an American utility. So my selection to bring to our little Paul Thomas Anderson roundtable is There Will Be Blood, from 2000.
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B
My name is Daniel Plainview.
- [32:25]
A
My name is Daniel Plainview. I drink your milkshake. I drink it up. There's something about There Will Be Blood. I feel like this is a movie in which PTA let himself get as far into just the visuals of filmmaking just becoming a pure cineast as he would ever do. He has his score. It was the first time he worked with Johnny Greenwood, which is so key to that movie and became so key to that. It's worth saying that he's a filmmaker who often dips into directing music videos and what music brings to the emotion, to the tension, to the pacing of his movies is so key. And There Will Be Blood is a movie about American ambition, greed, the despoilment of land. It's just about rapaciousness, all kinds of rapaciousness. We have the incredible of Eli Sunday, played by Paul Dano with his just, like, beautiful peeled potato face. We're. Oh, my God. Going against that. Like the pointed grizzle of Daniel Day Lewis.
- [33:29]
B
Louder, Daniel.
- [33:30]
C
I am a sinner.
- [33:31]
A
I am a sinner.
- [33:32]
B
I am sorry, Lord.
- [33:34]
A
I am sorry, Lord.
- [33:35]
B
I want the blood.
- [33:36]
A
You want the blood? You have abandoned your child.
- [33:40]
C
Say it.
- [33:41]
A
Say it.
- [33:42]
B
I abandoned my child. Say it. Louder.
- [33:45]
A
Say it.
- [33:45]
C
Louder.
- [33:46]
B
I've abandoned my child.
- [33:49]
A
I've abandoned my boy.
- [33:51]
B
Beg for the blood.
- [33:53]
C
Give me the blood, Eli.
- [33:55]
B
Let me get out of here.
- [33:55]
C
Give me the blood, Lord.
- [33:56]
A
And what I love about it is a kind of biblical quality. It is about good and evil, but there's not very much good. It's about an oil man who wants to extract from the earth every penny he can, who will stop at nothing to do it, who will lie and cheat and falsely confess his way in to acquisition, and who will be left, much like Citizen Kane, with a bounty that he kind of has no use for and doesn't know what to do with. And that's a very classically American story. Daniel Plainview is a huge villain. He's an anti hero. He's an evil, evil man who represents a lot of what's wrong with America. But he's riveting and he's beautiful and he's terrifying in a way that, like, in one battle after another, the Sean Penn character is just laughable. And I loved his performance. I think it's a great performance. But there's no part of you that wants to be inside what's going on with that guy?
- [34:55]
C
You don't wanna walk like that.
- [34:57]
A
I would love to do a little duck walk.
- [34:58]
C
You don't wanna do a little walk.
- [34:59]
A
A literal duck walk, just kind of quack quacking as he goes. Whereas in There Will Be Blood, I think it's kind of asking you to look at what made the world you live in, and it's men like this. And here you are in his face in one of the most beautiful shots in the movie. Daniel Day Lewis face is smeared in oil. That, of course, looks like blood. So, you know, are you clean? It's just a gorgeous work of art, and I love it. And then I love that Paul Thomas Anderson can give us something like, you know, Phantom Thread, also with Daniel day Lewis from 2017, about a very finicky and persnickety dressmaker from 1950s London who likes things just so, but is equally intent on control. Like, when I look at these movies and I wonder what you guys think about this. Domination and control is very much a theme that I see. Masculinity is very much a theme that I see, which goes hand in hand with that. We have these battles of, like, Vincent, you mentioned the Master, and the Master is about kind of the attempt of one domineering man to make and break and master another.
- [36:07]
B
Yeah. I mean, I think one scene in the Master, I don't know if you guys recall, but Amy Adams, who plays the Master's wife, jerks him off into the sink.
- [36:18]
C
Yes.
- [36:19]
B
Remember that?
- [36:19]
C
Yes.
- [36:20]
B
So this is a man who's, you know, all encompassing. You know, he's the master. What could be more kind of like dominating, domineering, and yet, Alex, I think it's so correct what you're saying. And it's the same with Phantom Thread, for instance, this man who seeks control at all costs and yet is revealed at particular moments to absolutely desire the release of control. That, you know, brief scene in the Master, like, remains in my mind as the kind of like, okay, she's gonna take over now. I'm just gonna be like an object in her hands, in her paws. Right. And it's the same Sean Penn in one battle after another. It's a comical portrayal of the same thing, I think. I mean, from the very beginning of the movie, Perfidia, Beverly Hills arrives at the tent or the barracks, whatever, where Sean Penn is kind of sitting guard and with a gun, basically overtakes him, but overtakes him kind of with his agreement. In some sense. She makes him, you know, gain an erection by her overpowering him. And he is a willing, in fact, a yearning participant in this exchange of power. Please, somebody, take away my power.
- [37:53]
A
Absolutely.
- [37:54]
B
While also being incredibly intent on retaining that power more generally.
- [38:00]
A
Totally. Yeah, I agree. I think the will to dominate, the will to submit, I think these things are in interesting conversation in his movies. Let me mention a movie that we have yet to discuss that is one that I personally wrestle with. And in fact, I rewatched it recently. And I feel, even though I don't love it, that I'm gonna keep rewatching it to try to figure out what is going on with my feelings about it. Inherent Vice from 2014. PTA loves Thomas Pynchon. Inherent Vice is much more faithful to the book. It's shambolic. It's roving. I don't love this movie. When I first saw it, I hated it. And I walked out of the theater. I was like.
- [38:34]
B
Walked out in the middle?
- [38:36]
A
Yeah, Yeah.
- [38:37]
B
I watched it until the end, but I remember. I agree with you. I really didn't like it.
- [38:44]
A
I'm just like, am I being forced in this movie to confront my own rigidness?
- [38:47]
B
I was like, what's the point? I don't understand. I was literally struggling to understand. I was like, am I stupid?
- [38:54]
A
I wanna love it. I feel a little bit like I'm stupid around it. And yet, Nomi, we're not.
- [38:58]
C
I think it's the movie of his that I've seen that most alludes to and is a product of his history as a music video director. Because it really is kind of like. It's stitched together by mood affect, music often, and by the sort of comedic acting of Joaquin Phoenix. There's a moment when he gets hit by a baseball bat and the way he goes out is pure Bugs Bunny. It's hilarious. I don't like it as much as any movie that we've talked about today, but I do think, aesthetically, one battle after another is closer to that than any other. I mean, not just the Pynchon thing, but the kind of dreaminess of the visuals and specifically of the transitions, the broad scope and its engagement with. Maybe this is one way to divide the. Some of them are really character studies that deal with, like, intimacies and relationships. But these two seem to engage, like Pynchon, with the idea of, like, the systems novel, that it's about a broader scope. Maybe Magnolia might fit into this as well. But it's like a systems cinema and then he has a personal cinema.
- [40:03]
A
But they do overlap. I mean, there is this again, like this only connect, this need for connection. At the heart of that movie too, you have Joaquin Phoenix playing Doc Sportello, who's a stoned sort of private investigator. And you have his ex lover and true love, Shasta, played by Katherine Waterson.
- [40:25]
C
I want to say.
- [40:25]
B
Yeah.
- [40:26]
A
And actually one of my favorite scenes in the movie. Again, a movie I don't particularly love, but I think about this scene all the time as a sex scene that happens between them. And it's a great sex scene. It's very sexy. It's very sad. It's about the moment where two people can truly be together surrounded by a bunch of moments in which they can't.
- [40:43]
C
Yeah, but it seems like even just like the father daughter thing, One Battle after another. I think the thematic heat is not with that moment. I think you like it. I like it because we like stuff like that. Even PTA says this. I don't think One Battle After Another cares that much about the father daughter thing with Leo and Chase and Finn.
- [41:02]
B
I think that's what he also cares about. I think he doesn't need to say it.
- [41:05]
C
He's like saying that that's the reason I don't the movie. That's not what I'm gonna remember about that movie at all. They're not even in it together that much. Yeah. I just don't feel the Heat is not there.
- [41:16]
B
I agree with you.
- [41:16]
C
That's how I feel. And I feel in the same way. The heat is not there with Inherent Vice. Both of those movies are really interested in, like, conspiracy. And the individual is a part of a bigger thing.
- [41:31]
A
So as we've mentioned, One Battle After Another is Anderson's first film in decades to be set today or in a slightly anachronistic version of today. So how is this master of the period film approaching our own period? That's in a minute on critics at large from the New York worker. Do you want a better relationship with.
- [41:58]
C
Yourself and the people around you, honey? Same.
- [42:01]
A
That's why on Getting Better, I'm talking with the most brilliant folks I can find. We are going deep to figure out how we can care for ourselves with more joy, curiosity and compassion.
- [42:11]
C
We're talking mental health, financial wellness, aging.
- [42:14]
A
Brains, tiny habits, and everything in between. So if you're ready to learn and.
- [42:18]
C
Unlearn and laugh a lot while we're at it, come join me, Jonathan Van.
- [42:22]
A
Ness on getting better available on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. All right. We've been talking pta. We've been talking what we love, what we don't love quite as much. I want to come back to this question of the present and how this film does or doesn't work in and with the present. Paul Thomas Anderson has been talking about adapting Vineland since at least the time when he did Inherent Vice. There were interviews then where he said he would like to do another pension. He loves Vineland. I had heard he wanted to make it earlier, after Phantom Thread, but he needed the cast of Licorice Pizza, Cooper, Hoffman, so on. He needed them right where he had them then, so he made that movie. But now, at this bizarre moment, this movie arrives. I mean, from the interviews I've seen. And I wonder what you guys think about this. Like, I don't think it's. PTA is like, thrilled that some of this stuff feels a little on the nose. Like he's not delighted that there's an extreme topical relevance here to, like, a bunch of left wing assassins. And frankly, I myself am surprised. You know, when we discussed Eddington, the Ari Aster movie that came out this summer, I was skeptical to the point of Rageful, that there was an antifa, or maybe it was a false flag, whatever, we're not gonna relitigate that. But that there was this kind of figure of a violent, supremely armed left, and now we're living in the reality we're living in, which is post Charlie Kirk assassination. And suddenly this stuff doesn't seem as fanciful anymore. What do you guys make of this moment and how it's being depicted?
- [44:13]
B
I think we are living through momentous times, and I think it's completely understandable that audiences would like to see these times depicted on screen and would want to see some form of resistance to some of the more insidious aspects of the times we're living in depicted on screen. I can totally understand why he would feel, I don't know, annoyed that it just so happens that this movie that he's been obviously working on for a long time and thinking about for a long time lands at exactly this particular moment, because I don't think he is a topical filmmaker. I think he's political in the sense that his movies often deal with America. They deal with power. All the things that we've been talking about, of course, all of these things are political, but he's not a filmmaker that responds to particular issues in the political landscape as they come. It didn't Also seem to me that the people in the French 75 and the political and the guerrilla group in the movie even necessarily had kind of like an ideological sense of what they were doing, you know, which also made me a little upset because I was like, okay, to me, it's totally fine if a movie doesn't want to deal, like. I mean, indeed, please. I love movies that don't necessarily deal directly with, like, the various crises that we're encountering on the ground in present day America. But if you're gonna. If you're gonna do it, then, like, make it convincing. I wasn't buying it.
- [46:07]
C
Yeah.
- [46:08]
B
And so I was like. I was stuck between these two feelings of, like, is it, Is it not? And if it is, then, like, do we even really care? Is it just, like, aestheticize, like, what the fuck is happening here? And if not, then why make it into present day? Then why have, like, the detention centers? Then why have the, by the way, quite faceless migrants, you know, escaping in the sort of tunnels and, you know, Benicio Del Torres, which was a more. Somewhat more convincing depiction of actual on the ground, you know, caring about actual people and yet still kind of felt like an excuse for a caper.
- [46:47]
C
Yeah, yeah. This is why I don't buy. I just feel like when people do something that is so about today and then they act like they're, well, I'm not political.
- [46:55]
B
Oh, this is about a father and a daughter. This is. Right.
- [46:58]
C
It kind of annoys me. It's like, okay, he's trying to talk about the present, and I'm wearing that I thought was like, get broad or get specific, but don't be in the middle. But there are really, I think, kind of electric moments. I wonder. This is a movie that I wonder what it will feel like to watch five years from now. I guess.
- [47:12]
A
Yeah. I think some of this is like, what I think Paul Thomas Anderson is trying to do. A huge key to the movie for me is the Gil Scott Heron song the Revolution Will Not Be Televised. This is a song that the members of the French 75 use as a passcode to one another. You know, the point of the song the Revolution Will Not Be Televised is frankly, that when the revolution comes, you're gonna get off your ass, you're gonna get out of the movie theater and you're gonna be in the streets and life is gonna be different. And there aren't gonna be commercials and there isn't gonna be Warner brothers giving you 140 to 170 million dollars to make your movie. And I feel like Paul Thomas Anderson is walking that line and seeing if he can have it a bit both ways. Can he televise the revolution? Can he film the revolution? And he knows that he can't. Like, we're dealing with a failed revolution. We're dealing with a bunch of people who thought that, like, sending off bombs and shooting people and even doing something liberatory like cutting open the wire at a nice migration detention center would make a difference. And none of it has made a difference. Cause in the present, those are the forces that are still being reckoned with. But do you still need to try? Do you still need to film the revolution? Do you still need to participate in the revolution? Like, that's what I think the movie is about. And this is, you know, also just like the possible power of a big Hollywood movie. Like, if people come out to see this movie is about just getting on the same page a little bit, even if it's Paul Thomas Anderson's out there page. What I mean by this is the very atomized experience of scrolling on social media, where some of us see videos of Ice beating up. As you know, it was widely circulated video last week, beating up a mother, just trying to ask where her husband went.
- [49:04]
C
You know, absolutely gutting. The worst thing I've ever seen.
- [49:06]
A
And yet I know that many people are not seeing that video. And that's just like a. Not a part of many people's visual presence. And I've seen Paul Thomas Anderson do the stuff that directors always do when they shoot on film, which is to be like, see this movie in a theater. It's made on film, capital F. And I'm all for that. I'm all for film. Go VistaVision. You're having your moment. Love it for you. Like, that's great. But I think another. And perhaps this isn't just inexcusably cheesy, but another big part of the movie is like seeing it together, being together. It's a movie that is gonna draw different kinds of audiences because it's a multiracial movie. A lot of movies are not. It's a white director, as you were saying, Vincent, who's dealing with black people in a way that most white directors don't. So I think that's the optimism of it, in a way. It's not necessarily the message at the end of the film, which is like, this shall continue on. I didn't find that optimistic. I didn't find the idea that a failed movement continuing on in diminished form in the future was going to be so encouraging. Like, that's not making me happy, but what is making me feel something good is the attempt to get everyone together to look this in the face.
- [50:17]
B
I like that. And that really is inextricable from the movie's ambition and the fact that industry got behind it. Because that size of thing, that reach doesn't happen without the backbone of big money.
- [50:34]
A
I have friends who feel like this movie could change the world. I'm not a person who thinks that, but I guess the movie is making a case for what? I know. No, dude, I know. But I guess the movie is making a case for, like, it's about failed radicals. It's making a case ultimately for incremental action and for just carrying something forward and like the inevitable failure of the grand gesture. And so maybe that's what we must hold onto.
- [51:02]
B
It is what it is.
- [51:04]
C
It's about humanity's struggle to remember the password.
- [51:07]
A
Exactly. This has been Critics at Large. This week's episode was produced by Michelle o'. Brien. Alex Barish is our consulting editor. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Conde Nast's head of global audio is Chris Bannon. Alexis Quadrato composed our theme music, and we had engineering help today from James Yost with mixing by Mike Kutchman. You can find every episode of Critics at large@newyorker.com critics hi, I'm Tyler Foggatt, a senior editor at the New Yorker and one of the hosts of the Political Scene podcast. A lot of people are justifiably freaked out right now, and I think that it's our job at the Political Scene to encourage people to stop and think about the particular news stories that are actually incredibly significant in this moment by having these really deep conversations with writers where we actually get into the weeds of what is going on right now and about the damage that is being done. It's not resistance in the activist sense, but I think it is resistance in the sense that we are resisting the feeling of being overwhelmed by chaos. Join me and my colleagues David Remnick, Evan Osnos, Jane Mayer and Susan Glasser on the Political Scene podcast from the New York Parker. New episodes drop three times a week. Available wherever you get your podcasts.
- [52:47]
B
From PRX.