Paul Thomas Anderson’s Art Blockbuster: Why One Battle After Another Starring Leonardo DiCaprio Is Making Waves

One Battle After Another is gaining momentum at the box office. Directed by the cult filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson, the film is a powerful piece of work — an ambitious mix of arthouse aesthetics and blockbuster energy. It unites three Academy Award winners and carries striking ideas beneath its surface. Could this be the defining film of the year? Let’s unpack what makes it so resonant.

The screenplay for One Battle After Another was nearly twenty years in the making. Anderson admits it wasn’t easy to bring his vision to life. The story takes inspiration from Thomas Pynchon’s postmodern novel Vineland — a tale about the decay of counterculture, generational conflict, and state control. Anderson transposes the novel’s action from 1984, the year Ronald Reagan was re-elected, to contemporary America.

The result is a film so politically charged that it seems to hover on the edge of censorship. Like Stephen King’s The Long Walk, it’s a story about resistance. Here, the revolutionaries fight against new forms of repression — from abortion bans to the persecution of migrants. The film opens with the liberation of detainees at the U.S.–Mexico border and later references a fictionalized version of ICE, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Anderson skillfully draws historical parallels: 1984 — Reagan’s re-election and the rise of neoliberal conservatism; 2024 — Donald Trump’s return to power and the tightening of immigration policy. History, the director seems to suggest, moves in circles.

As noted, the film brings together three Oscar-winning actors — Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, and Benicio del Toro. The first two take the lead roles: protagonist and antagonist. DiCaprio plays Bob, the head of a left-wing revolutionary group, while Penn portrays Colonel Lockjaw, a man deeply entrenched within the political elite. Two leaders on opposite sides of the barricade. A dictatorship leaves no middle ground — yet both sides, as the film argues, belong to the same coin.

Their fates intertwine through a woman — Bob’s comrade and wife, Perfidia Beverly Hills. She gives birth to a daughter named Charlene, who years later brings the two men into direct conflict. Through this child’s story, Anderson reflects on fatherhood, portraying it from both moral and biological perspectives and questioning what truly makes someone a father.

Charlene becomes a symbolic bridge between the warring worlds — a predictable but powerful metaphor: the new generation always acts differently from the old. She is the child of the revolution, a hope for a reality that never came to pass. The revolutionaries failed to overthrow the system and now live in hiding, haunted and hunted. Yet the system, too, collapses under its own weight — a truth revealed by the film’s ending. Anderson doesn’t remain neutral: his sympathies lie clearly with the rebels.

Once again, Anderson swims against the current. Instead of digital cameras, he chose VistaVision, a vintage 1950s Paramount film format. The technique runs 35 mm film horizontally, doubling the frame’s size and delivering near-IMAX resolution. The image isn’t just beautiful — it breathes. Chase scenes and shootouts look stunning on the big screen, filled with air and texture.

Anderson isn’t the only one reviving VistaVision — the 2024 drama The Brutalist was also shot in this format. Large film negatives are clearly making a comeback among directors. Perhaps it’s the allure of analog grain and the high fidelity of horizontal frames — or maybe it’s part of the wider retro wave that has defined the 2020s.

Despite the nostalgia, the decade is undeniably birthing new trends. Recently, we discussed Instruments, a film belonging to the fast-growing genre of “horror of grief” — proof that cinema continues to evolve in surprising ways.

One Battle After Another is a mature, confident film with every right to claim success. Beneath the shell of an action spectacle à la Kill Bill lies a story about ideals, hope, and love. Behind the gunfire and chases is a deep yearning for a world where a person can choose not a political side — but humanity itself.

What do you think about One Battle After Another? Share your opinion in comments.