Another classic Gothic horror is remade for the modern age: first we saw Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, and now Guillermo del Toro brings us his adaptation of Frankenstein. Like Nosferatu, Frankenstein is astonishing to look at, and, like Nosferatu, also written by its director, it probably would have benefitted from the attention of a professional screenwriter. Still, it’s a pleasure to spend time in the word del Toro envisions, and we talk wide angle lenses, the range of performances – Oscar Isaac’s busy, Jacob Elordi’s brooding, Mia Goth’s underwhelming – the difficulty of understanding dialogue in screen two at the Mockingbird, and what this Frankenstein thematically shares with One Battle After Another.
We’re joined by our resident Paul Thomas Anderson expert (and Mike’s brother), Stephen Glass, to whom we’ve previously spoken about Phantom Thread and Licorice Pizza, for another discussion of One Battle After Another. Stephen’s seen it in both VistaVision and IMAX 70mm, and can offer a sense of the experience Mike and José missed seeing it in IMAX Digital, and so begins a wide-ranging conversation about the film’s aesthetics, tone, politics, influences and more.
By far Paul Thomas Anderson’s most expensive film, with a budget some four or five times what he’s used to, and probably his most accessible, One Battle After Another entertains us enormously and effortlessly without sacrificing the complexity and nuance for which his work is known. Set in an alternate America oppressed by Christofascism, the alternate part is that there’s a very active militant revolutionary group, the French 75, setting bombs off and freeing detained minorities. Leonardo DiCaprio is part of it, and sixteen years after the conclusion of his group’s activities, their work has entered countercultural legend, but he’s become a drug-addicted, paranoid burnout, trying to raise a teenage daughter. When the powers that be come looking for them, they’re separated, all hell breaks loose, and he has to step up.
José finds One Battle After Another to be the film of the moment, the state of the nation film that Eddington could only dream of being, a powerful, invigorating expression of what ails America and what it means to resist. Mike is more cynical, seeing an element of mockery in the revolution that has no apparent intention to end and is carried out over generations. We love the easygoing style of filmmaking that Anderson seems to have grown into, comparing it to the rigid formality of his early work, and finding that he has a talent for action cinema that’s never quite come out before. We also discuss the film’s themes of youth and ageing, parenting, the Christian right and more.
One Battle After Another is an unmissable film, the kind that fifty years ago would have defined America’s national conversation. Cinema no longer holds that level of cultural cachet, sadly, but One Battle After Another is a powerful, energetic, and very funny reminder of what film can do at its best.
Eavesdropping at the Movies 