A film with such a long runtime is dreadfully easy for me to overlook these days. I just can rarely find the time to invest into a single film that can take up such a large portion of the day. I've mentioned this problem before, and especially with how so many films that do have long runtimes rarely actually do anything with it. One Battle After Another also failed to stand out to me simply because I'm admittedly not much of a fan of Leonardo DiCaprio. I've been a bit tired of his performances and having them tend to feel a bit all too much the same. I haven't seen a film that shows him with much range in a long time. He has reached that point of every character no longer being a character, and instead just DiCaprio. I've seen many people online saying similar things with the current state of blockbuster releases, how they're feeling the fatigue of the bigger celebrity faces in everything.
After a few exhausting days I realised I finally had some time to spare, wanting to sit and wind down and watch something different. I had been seeing good things about One Battle After Another and figured I'd give it a chance despite it being something I otherwise wouldn't check out. I was also very intrigued by the film given it was directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, who is a name with a ton of directing skill, but also a name you don't hear that often. He definitely went all-out on this one. While viewing it I could see why the film managed to get the traction it did, and there's definitely some truth to the cast and director's name being a reason people checked it out. But this was incredibly well made.
The film's narrative took an interesting turn quite early on. Showing a revolutionary which is playing a very dangerous game against the government and corporations. Throwing himself into acts of terror with a woman that clearly isn't good for him. The two coming to realise they're with very different ideologies once a more important thing comes into the equation: the birth of their child. The woman finding jealousy in how her revolutionary husband doesn't pay so much attention to her, how he's more focused on raising the daughter and giving her a good upbringing. I actually really liked how the film started off, showing this contrast between someone caught up in an ideology and another person who genuinely just seems evil. It does not take long to see the contrast in their characters at all. It also brings into the question of who is a revolutionary attempting to fight for a better cause and who just thrives on the power of it.
This remains a film of consequence though. Showing the corruption of people and the attempts to move forward in a world that refuses to let the past go. The revolutionaries are hunted down one after the other, with a strange military officer fuelled by his own fantasies at the wheel of it all. This is setup quite early on, with him stalking the group not out of any intent to bring them to justice, but out of his own lust for a woman, mixed with his jealousy for her reliance on the group and of course her partner. I should note that each of this comes in within the first half an hour, still setting the stage for the main narrative, set into the future now that Bob has aged and his daughter is now going into adulthood. Bob still troubled, washed-up and struggling to adapt into the new world without fully setting aside his previous ideas.
I mentioned before that a lot of blockbuster films have incredibly long runtimes and don't do much with them, I do think that this is one of those films which overstayed its welcome a bit. It's beautifully made, but two hours and 42 minutes? A bit too long. While these moments are used to set the tone a bit more, to establish the many events that unfold throughout to show all of the pieces moving at once. With attempting to world build in this way, I think character development ends up lacking. We've had our setup already, we know what's happening. There are moments in which we see Bob and his current state, his lack of care for the world now. Whereas his daughter is far more reasonable and mature.
The cinematography is pretty good. I liked the colours and the compositions. The close ups which showed Bob and his aged decay over the years. The wide angles which were cinematic and establishing, revealing the motion and action in the moments that mattered. So, I do think the film is impressive, and it's nice to see that audiences still accept them. But perhaps not entirely for me.
