We’re not sure who runs America in Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, One Battle After Another. No president is ever mentioned. Leftist militants bomb a fictional senator’s office, but that’s as far as we know about what Congress is up to. We don’t know what year it is. We don’t know anything about the alternate history that brought the characters to this moment.
What we do know is that the country is engulfed in what could be called a low-grade civil war. The government is rounding up migrants and putting them in detention centers. The aforementioned leftist militants, who call themselves the French 75, are storming those centers and releasing the prisoners. They’re also engaged in a bombing campaign against banks, government offices, and even the power grid.
This is a movie about political violence that’s come out in a moment of political violence. It’s also earning rave reviews, with New York magazine calling it “a sneakily optimistic vision of how to forge protective bonds in authoritarian times.” The New York Times likewise praised its rejection of “complacency,” “oppression,” and “tyranny.”
Based on what critics are saying, one could imagine the film is a call to arms against the Trump administration. But it’s a bit more complicated than that. It’s a movie that asks us whether it’s the personal or the political that drives people to take stands, even violent ones—a question, albeit unspoken, that dogs all of its central characters. It’s the most overtly political movie Anderson has ever made. But its “message” isn’t necessarily the one the critics are embracing.
