Let’s Talk About the Unsung Hero of ‘One Battle After Another’

Let’s Talk About the Unsung Hero of ‘One Battle After Another’

Header Image Source: Warner Bros. Pictures

Perhaps more so than any other Paul Thomas Anderson film to date, One Battle After Another feels presciently timely in its universe-next-door depiction of an irreconcilably polarized America as a heavily surveilled hellscape where state-sanctioned violence runs rampant. While it is basically impossible to intentionally make a movie to meet a moment — cultural moments pass too quickly, and making a movie simply takes too long — sometimes fate or chance or whatever you’d like to call it steps in, and everything just aligns.

To get one thing out of the way early — this piece is not a commentary on the film’s politics, nor any of the numerous takes, insightful or decidedly otherwis