One Battle After Another is that rare American film that simultaneously speaks to and skewers the times we live in.  

It’s original, unique, twisty, bizarre, seriously political and hysterically funny.

And it’s going to get a boatload of Oscar nominations and likely win more than a whole handful.

Not that this kind of thing much matters given the times we’re living in. 

But let’s discuss it anyway, since right now I’m tired of speaking to the fascistic moment of the day. 

Not to mention, One Battle After Another does it far better as we watch a real band of left wing radicals, who seem like lunatics but aren’t, take on a white Supremacist-powered American military hellbent on rounding up, killing or simply sequestering into truly crumbling sanctuary cities, every single person, especially those of color, who are not 100% onboard with its own even more radical agenda.

Yes, it’s a fictional, pushed reality world of the 1980s and 90s that Anderson started writing some years ago, partly inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, but you don’t have to use your imagination much, if at all, to believe this is documentary footage from secret pockets of today’s America or its very near future.

That is what great filmmakers can do.  Make you think something is or could be happening right now and cause you to think about whether you want that reality and those consequences. 

And within that group there are a small chosen few that can even get you to uproariously laugh about the absurdity of the times we’re living in and the sheer narcissistic, animal destructiveness of what we’re doing.

There is an even smaller number, perhaps up to three, who can also pull this off using the tropes of a traditional family drama/love story.

But let’s get back to what really matters – whether PTA will win finally win his long-awaited, and very long overdue, Oscar(s) for his troubles.

It’s hard to imagine Paul Thomas Anderson, an ELEVEN time nominee who has never won an Academy Award, is sitting around wondering whether this will be “his year.”  That’s the purview of the press and everyone else who works in the industry who longs to win one.

This is not to say PTA doesn’t want to win or won’t be there to accept the one or two or hopefully three that might be coming his way.

But when you’ve made so many memorable films, worked with the best in the business and remain one of a tiny group of truly successful and critically acclaimed American auteurs over the last thirty years that continues to swing for the fences every time you’re up at bat (Note: Yes, even I can do baseball metaphors when they apply), the surprisingly weighty little gold statuette, cool as it is, is more for the rest of us fans of the guy, than the guy himself.

Having only met him briefly one time at the beginning of his career, I have very little real idea of how he’ll react.  But I imagine him having a similar response to Martin Scorsese, when he finally won the award for The Departed, a solid film but pretty much no one’s top one or two films in his oeuvre.

After tumultuous applause there were numerous thank you’s and sincere words of being “overwhelmed” and “moved.” But what always stayed with me was his shout out to the many people who loved his movies for so long who were en masse pissed off that after Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas and The Aviator (Note: To name only a very few) he had yet to be “officially” acknowledged by his, ahem, “peers.”

…I just want to say, too, that so many people over the years have been wishing this for me, strangers, you know. I go walking in the street people say something to me, I go in a doctor’s office, I go in a…whatever…elevators, people are saying, “You should win one, you should win one.” I go for an x-ray, “You should win one.” And I’m saying,”Thank you.” And then friends of mine over the years and friends who are here tonight are wishing this for me and my family. I thank you. This is for you.

Paul Thomas Andreson hasn’t been working nearly as long and has had a far different career.  But speaking for those of us who marveled at, were inspired by or simply loved movies like Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, The Master and The Phantom Thread, I gotta say:

He better f’n win one this time, and it’d be even more fitting for it to happen for one of his best and most timely films.

As I continue to express the sentiments of the many who will continue to channel their gargantuan political anger into this year’s Oscar race, let me add this tidbit from a person who has spent his entire adult life in and around the movie business. 

I‘d venture to say it’s a lot harder to write AND direct so many interesting and outstanding films, much less get them made and released through the studio system these days, than it is to tear down a 250 year-old democracy.

Certainly, it takes a lot more talent.

Speaking of which, you don’t get to work with actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn, who deliver some of their most memorable recent performances in OBAA, or draw award-worthy performances from lesser known onscreen performers like Teyana Taylor and Chase Infiniti, if you’re not at the top of your game. 

Nor will you get a major studio like Warner Bros. to back you, especially on a $150 million plus budgeted project (Note: That’s before marketing) that speaks to THE hot button political issue of the day.

The right loves to tar all of Hollywood with the same broad “overly woke brush,” but if you check the release schedule for every major studio the real revelation is how safe and essentially non-political the vast majority of major studio financed and distributed films there are, none of which come close to fitting comfortably into that category.

Would that it were the case.

Because if woke means being “awake” and “alert,” especially when it comes to inequality, racism, sexism and homophobia (just to name a few), one can’t help but wonder – why would ANYONE, much less SO MANY, be so virulently against it?

Which brings us back to PTA and One Battle After Another and how he sets an example for any active or aspiring filmmakers out there.

Strip away all the successful films he’s made and all the awards he was nominated for and didn’t win, and you’ll find he’s a long-married husband to beloved comic actor/producer Maya Rudolph, and a family man/father of four biracial kids who sat down a few years ago to the same blank screen/page every creative person is faced with. 

And what he came up with was a story of an interracial couple in a far right dystopian American landscape and what silly and horrible things could happen to them and theirs if one day…

Eh, better to let him show and tell it to you himself and see if it rings true to what you’re watching happen all around you in real time.  And if you admire him for it.

As for the Oscar, well, that’s out of most of our hands.  Though hopefully not his.

Music and Trailer from One Battle After Another