One Battle After Another

Screened at Festival Theaters, Palm Springs, California.

In continuing my theme of trying to figure out what is missing in Paul Thomas Anderson films, as pointed out in my brief thoughts on his last, Licorice Pizza, I think I've figured it out from my perspective with his latest, One Battle After Another. Like most of his other films, the "PTA" fan base has heralded this as a "masterpiece" immediately on its release. Of course, calling every one of his films as such, basically cancels it all out, and I think that's why I've gone into many of his films with a high level of skepticism.

Has PTA made any good films? Absolutely. Is there a masterpiece in him somewhere? I'd say yes, especially since There Will Be Blood came very close. But he's never crossed the finish line. He and his supporters seem like they're constantly in pursuit of the great masterpiece, but they defeat their objective by claiming each film as such during their respective promotional pushes. Remember the over-the-top rhetoric for The Master? I mean it's right there in the title, and yet who even remembers or speaks of that film since? I'm not saying he's not a good filmmaker. He clearly is. But the grandiosity reeks stronger on every release, and while this film IS arguably good in many regards, I'm just yet again not feeling it.

For me, he's been so hard into the hunt for that elusive masterpiece that the issue is he forgets to flesh out his characters. From Boogie Nights to Inherent Vice, I always find it very hard to care about any of them, and that's the problem again here. There is something so unbearably empty about the characters yet again that like like most of his films, this was doze-inducing. Granted, it's not nearly as bad as say Inherent Vice, but still, the track record continues. I'm sure others could argue me into silence about this, but there is a hollow, empty vibe with his characters and writing, almost coldly clinical, that it takes me right out of it as I've simply been given no reason for liking or have any feeling for these characters on any level.

My advice: spend less time on your “vista vision” and award-seeking and more time on giving those characters some level of soul. This film has plenty of strengths, I do understand why people speak highly of him. But for me, this continued strain throughout Anderson's filmography is one I can't look past.