Opinion ‘One Battle After Another’ is a critical success and commercial flop: Is it still worth fighting for great cinema?

But this aspect of the story kicks in roughly 35 minutes into the film. What we get for most of the first half hour is some pulsating table setting which deals with a made-up, far-left revolutionary group called the French 75 whose members are multi-cultural and fiercely anti-establishment, not hesitating to blow up government buildings and revel in general violent chaos. These early montage scenes are edited with a sense of urgency and there’s a risky “playing with fire” quality to them. There’s also the frivolity of youth at play where scenes of explosion and exploitation serve as seduction for these characters.

Anderson’s film is an anomaly. It is a nearly three-hour non-superhero, non-IP, standalone film that is a bit tricky to slot into a genre. Of late, a lot of films that exceed the two-hour mark have been accused of “feeling their length”. It is quite a wonder then that despite the long runtime, One Battle After Another keeps you engrossed, putting its characters through the wringer and introducing a cavalcade of interesting scenarios and environments. All of this culminates in a remarkable climactic chase sequence that uses the geographical terrain of Borrego Springs, California to create cinematic tension. It’s a sight to behold.

The film also weaves in satire and humour in an interesting manner. Take, for example, the characters of Penn (Lockjaw) and DiCaprio (Pat). One a racist ex-military officer, the other an ex-revolutionary who now spends his time slacking away, getting stoned. A lot of the jokes in One Battle After Another centre around Pat’s total lack of competence when called back into active “line of duty” by his former revolutionary buddies. He can’t remember code words, his body isn’t what it used to be and in place of the focused objective of a rebel what he’s left with is a confused haze of someone playing catch up. Contrast this with Lockjaw, who is trying to get inducted into a clandestine wealthy white-supremacist group. Now, the depiction of these far-right supremacists is also comical but it’s laced with a streak of threat. The treatment of these scenes is anything but funny. It’s like a group of bumbling racist fools have been given the reigns of power. Draw whatever real-life analogy you like from that.

One Battle After Another has also raised a fair share of debate over its racial politics. A number of critics have pointed out that this might be PTA’s most personal film yet since at its centre is a child of mixed race parentage, Anderson himself is father to children with an African-American partner, Maya Rudolph. This has led to arguments about the depiction of Black female characters in the film and how their fates tend to meet dubious ends in service of the male characters. Social commentator and podcaster Van Lathan has done a thorough dissection of this on the show The Big Picture.

Despite the rave reviews and placement on “best of” lists though, One Battle After Another has been announced as one of the biggest box-office bombs of the year losing over $100 million in theatres according to Variety. This ironically poses a question that’s similar to the one the film seems to be asking in its text. Does one keep being a revolutionary for a cause even when the chances of victory seem to keep receding? Does one simply keep striving to make better films even if the audiences at large seem to have abandoned supporting them in the theatres?

I also couldn’t help but wonder whether we will ever see a film with the subject matter similar to One Battle After Another on our shores. Imagine depicting members of an anti-government revolutionary group as heroes while an ex-army man is portrayed as a cruel villain. Whether revolutionary and boundary-pushing cinema will be back in Indian theatres will only be determined by fighting one battle after another over censorship, financing and cinema literacy.

The writer is a podcast producer and stand-up comedian