One Battle After Another’s ‘American Girl’ Ending, Explained

Spoilers follow for One Battle After Another , including the ending.

In One Battle After Another , state-sanctioned violence is everywhere. The United States’ southern border is a heavily surveilled nightmare, and the country’s agents can do anything they want — threaten citizens, raid factories, occupy schools. The fact that it manages to be hopeful at all is a miracle, and yet in the end, that’s exactly what One Battle After Another is: a portrait of how individuals can resist, make a difference, and protect one another at a time when the American government won’t do it for you. Paul Thomas Anderson’s film is simultaneously an unrelentingly grim portrayal of America’s overpoliced and militarized past, present, and future, and a sneakily optimistic vision of how to forge protecti