One Battle After Another (Christian Movie Review)

Cinematically excellent, thematically challenging, and morally questionable, Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is a well-crafted film with a lot to say, poising some provocative questions it fails to answer satisfactorily.

About the Film 

Life is messy and people are complicated. At times, cinema offers stories that transcend the mire of this reality by making order out of the chaos. Other times, filmmakers merely reflect the ugly chaos back to viewers and challenge them to confront it. One Battle After Another is the latter. Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, one of Hollywood’s auteurs, the film mirrors many of the social anxieties and cultural tensions of our day.    

One Battle After Another is a difficult film to pin down. Its eclectic mix of genres and tones, expansive cast, and sprawling near-three-hour runtime, give it an epic scope and complexity. It’s politically charged themes about oppression and revolutionary violence have added weight against the cultural backdrop of the Charlie Kirk assassination and is sure to be divisive. Paul Thomas Anderson clearly has a lot to say, but for all its cultural relevance and thematic scope, One Battle After Another is not always as profound a work of social commentary as it strives to be.

Paul Thomas Anderson is a quirky filmmaker. His storytelling sensibilities are not to everyone’s personal tastes (including my own), but he is a cinema darling for a reason. One Battle After Another is an impressive work of film. The movie is arguably 30 minutes too long and can be overly indulgent to the point of frustration, but there is a level of technical proficiency (vivid framing and long-takes) that may take subsequent viewings to fully appreciate (whether another viewing is desirable is another matter entirely).  

The film boasts several dynamic acting performances. As usual, Leonardo DiCaprio is captivating, once again showcasing his uncommon ability to balance both dramatic and comedic sensibilities. Even if I found his performance cartoonish, Sean Penn, playing the film’s primary villain, is another actor likely to generate buzz and critical acclaim. With both the directing and acting, there is plenty of fodder for cinephiles and critics to admire, and the film is sure to be a major player at the next Oscar award season.

The merit of the film as a work of cultural commentary is less clear cut. Similar to Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17, One Battle After Another is the work of an acclaimed filmmaker who attempts an insightful dissection of modern culture but wields a chainsaw rather than a scalpel to do so. There is an element of intentional satire and exaggeration, but its depiction of America is overwhelmingly heavy handed. For example, every white male in the film is either a racist, a white-nationalist oppressor (at worst), or an ignorant bigot (at best).  

While the film clearly wears its embodied worldview on its sleeve; it mostly avoids sermonizing about it. It presents America from a fixed vantage point but rarely tries to tell audiences what to do with the material on screen (other than one pandering moment involving a non-binary character and their they/them pronouns). The “bad guys” are despicably bad, and, save for Willa Ferguson, a teenage girl pulled against her will into the generational conflict of her parents (a standout performance by actress Chase Infiniti in her debut theatrical role), there aren’t many clear cut “good guys” to be found.  

Teyanna Taylor’s revolutionary warrior is the extreme antithesis to the evil white nationalist oppressors. Throughout the film, she fights against perceived injustices such as “open national borders” or an “abortion ban”, but her violent tactics are not presented in a positive light. Even her fellow revolutionaries resist elevating her as a “hero” and instead call her a “rat.” The film’s underlying worldview about oppression and tyranny is clear, but the characters who populate that world are more complex. While the scales may not be evenly balanced, the film is willing to question the “revolution” and not just the oppressors.

In the end, One Battle After Another is a technically impressive and thematically complicated film. It is a change-of-pace from the empty Hollywood spectacle of recent years, and a film that strives to stimulate viewers intellectually, even if it seems to merely affirm rather than influence the preexisting beliefs of its audience. It’s hard-R rating and prevalence of profanity and sexual elements may keep many Christians from giving an ear to what it has to say. For those who do, it offers a grim picture of a sinful and unjust world. Whether One Battle After Another reinforces the same mentality that caused that broken world or lights a hopeful path forward is a question worth pondering.

Endless Cycle of Oppression and Injustice

The film’s title perfectly encapsulates its thematic point of view—life is an endless cycle of systemic oppression and revolution. The way characters move in and out of the story, often unceremoniously, further highlights that they are merely interchangeable players in an ever-unfolding game. During an interview with his daughter’s history teacher, Bob Ferguson observes celebrated figures of American history displayed throughout the classroom and proceeds to point out their flaws as slave owners and oppressors. The story of America according to One Battle After Another (or at least, to Bob Ferguson) is one of corrupting power and those willing to fight back against it.  

Where the film gets more interesting is in exploring how these endless battles are fought. In the film’s opening sequence, Perfidia Beverely Hills (Teyana Taylor) declares that revolutionary violence is the only answer. Much of the remaining film is an examination of that mindset. The turning point is the birth of her child. Bob implores her to give up the fight and focus on their daughter, but Perfidia (influenced in part by postpartum depression) chooses the revolution instead. Interestingly, both sides in the revolutionary conflict are defined, to a certain degree, by primal lust. For Sean Penn’s white nationalist oppressor, it’s displayed as overt sexual desire. For Perfidia, it’s more a lust for violence (at one point she declares that guns and revolutions are more satisfying than sexual pleasure). For both the oppressors and the revolutionaries, the endless battles have become a sort of game, detached from the humanity at the center.

The film’s central conflict is arguably not between tyranny and revolutionaries, but is embodied in Willa, a teenager born into a broken world. She must choose to follow the legacy of her violent revolutionary mother, or of her father, who has abandoned the fight and copes by drinking and drugging himself. The film ultimately ends as a call to action to “keep fighting,” and a hope that the youth can lead the way (although it is not clear is whether Willa will break the cycle of endless violence and offer a new way forward or simply add another chapter to the unending battles).

Notably, churches are presented in a positive light, but serve primarily as forces of social activism, not for worship. In contrast, the more overtly religious organization—the Christmas Adventurers Club—is a source of bigotry and oppression. In the America of One Battle After Another, religion seems valuable only so far as it joins the battle against oppression. Christians can affirm the grim depiction of a broken world and condemn the hypocrisy of those who hijack Christianity for cultural power At the same time, they can recognize that in the absence of a transcendental God or spiritual reality, we are merely left with one battle after another in a endless cycle of hatred and evil.