Nothing about Hollywood should surprise Paul Thomas Anderson. The 55-year-old, Los Angeles born-and-bred filmmaker has made most of his movies in or about his hometown — films praised or challenged by his critical community.
His darkly satiric new movie, aptly titled One Battle After Another, opened September 26 to rapturous, or merely stunned, reviews, only to confront a $34 million box office intrusion from Taylor Swift — one that may ironically enhance Anderson’s future Oscar forays.
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Not exactly, since Anderson’s own $100 million-grossing release party isn’t precisely “serious” either. One Battle introduces audiences to a new film genre dubbed by one European critic as “surreally suicidal.” Anderson’s chaotic but intensely touching father-daughter saga is set against a cluttered canvas of revolutionaries, cultists and political hustlers. Some MAGA voices see the movie as an assault on the faithful warriors of the “hard right” and, after a slow start, they’re fueling up their attack across social media.
Warner Bros, the distributor, is watching edgily. While the filmmaker’s first nine movies were modestly budgeted — see Inherent Vice (2014) or Hard Eight (1996) — the $140 million One Battle, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, plunges Anderson into franchise-like economics. Its box office numbers inevitably have been compared to those of DiCaprio’s last epic, Killers of the Flower Moon, directed by Martin Scorsese.
That movie opened well, then dwindled, and was ultimately labeled a financial disappointment for Apple, its distributor. One Battle, from Warner Bros, isn’t cushioned by telephones or technology.
Further, while Scorsese’s early work shouted New York as its ethnic hub, Anderson films tend to be culturally ambiguous. One Battle, like his other recent movies, is based on a book by Thomas Pynchon, the James Joyce of private eye novelists. Another, Inherent Vice, starred Joaquin Phoenix in a 2014 Anderson-Pynchon L.A. whodunit.
Scorsese movies tend to hover in a Goodfellas-like prism while Anderson has ventured into the universe of porn (Boogie Nights, 1997), or design (Phantom Thread, 2017), or cults (The Master, 2012). Licorice Pizza (2021) represented a nostalgic glimpse of Anderson-centric turf — the San Fernando Valley. In contrast, There Will Be Blood (2007) starring Daniel Day-Lewis was an angry portrait of an exploitive developer based on Upton Sinclair’s classic 1926 novel Oil.
Some award gurus are betting that One Battle will be rewarded for its bold narrative and subtext. It certainly represents a mood shift from Swift’s record-setting romantic musings.
Anderson already owns shelves crowded with nomination plaques and film festival hardware, but the ultimate Oscar, Best Picture, has been more elusive; as though, for Academy voters, it represents one battle too many.