Naomi: This is Critics At Large, a podcast from The New Yorker. I'm Nomi Fry.
Vinson:  I'm Vincent Cunningham. 
Alex: And I'm Alex Schwartz. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. Hello Critics. 
Naomi: Hello, Alex Lily. Hello, Tis I. What's up?
Alex:  Well, today I have three words for you.
Paul Thomas Anderson. Yes. Medal 
PTA is back. Paul Thomas Anderson. We are talking about the prolific and dare I say it, beloved writer, director. This man is 55. He's been making movies since his twenties, and PTA, I would say his work is hard to pin down. he loves to time travel. He's taken us from the early 20th century oil fields in the West to the 1970s, San Fernando Valley suburbs, to a 1950s London fashion house. And there's always something interesting and very ambitious about his films.
When I, I, uh, I perk right up when I know New PTAs is coming, coming down the pike. And that is certainly true of his new film. One Battle after another, 
        CLIP
one Battle after another is loosely based on the 1990 Thomas Pynchon novel, Vineland. And it's Paul Thomas Anderson's second Pynchon adaptation after his movie Inherent Vice, which came out in 2014.
It's got a big bold ensemble cast. It has Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Teyana Taylor, Regina Hall, and Newcomer Splendidly named Chase Infiniti. Mm-hmm. And I just wanna say right at the top, it's also, um, and I think this will be significant for us, it's Paul Thomas Anderson's most expensive movie by far.
Its budget is rumored to be somewhere between, I think 135 and $170 million. Warner Brothers put up the money for this movie. This is very interesting fact to me, which I know we will be discussing. Um, and we are going to get all into it to talk about the film and what we thought. But as a teaser, I'm wondering Nomi and Vincent.
Vinson: Mm-hmm. Guys, 
Alex: gimme a one line review. Make it punchy, make it quick. Make it as quick as this movie is. Un quick 
Vinson: violent, it's a rare movie. Violent, violent, fun, 
Naomi: uh, pretty good, ultimately overhyped. A classic fry take that I love. Oh God, I'm such a hater. I'm sorry. Never apologize. I still love UPTA. 
Alex: We're gonna expand on these today, I hope. Hope so. Oh yes. When we talk about one battle after another, and we're gonna also be talking about, um, just the work of Paul Thomas Anderson. We're gonna talk about our favorite films of his and some that never quite did it for us.
And I just wanna point out one thing that I find very interesting about one battle after another, which is that it is the first of PTA's movies in more than two decades that is set in the present and what a present it is. This is a big budget movie about leftist radicals and a powerful cabal of white supremacists.
It's also an intimate family movie that is focused on the complications and the bonds of parental love. And Paul Thomas Anderson is director who is fascinated by the way that people exploit and try to control one another. But here, I think he's also trying to understand what it means for people to care about each other too.
And these are all questions that are both timeless in the way of a big, ambitious movie and very much of our time. And the big question I have for us is, does Paul Thomas Anderson meet the moment? that's today on critics at Large one PTA film after another.
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Alex: Alright. This is a long, twisty and turn movie. It is almost three hours long. A lot happens. So, just to start, who wants to explain the most basic premise of one battle after another? 
Vinson: One battle after another begins in the world of a sort of multicultural multiracial cell of political revolutionaries, uh, called the French 75.
They're sort of the sly in the family stone of domestic terrorism. Among them are Leonardo DiCaprio as, uh. Ghetto Pat is the first kind of moniker under which we know him and Tiana Taylor as Prolia Beverly Hills. They're sort of the ones that we get to know earlier in this early sort of collaged montage of their exploits.
You know, their freeing, what looks like some sort of ice enclosure of migrants who have been put into some awful situation. They're robbing banks, they're doing all kinds of things, uh, to express their sort of, um, political malcontent. And it all falls apart. There's a sort of botched bank robbery that lands, uh, the Tiana Taylor character in jail and basically she's apprehended and, uh, were given to know, kind of like rats on everybody and they all split up across the country.
Everybody has to go into some, some form of anonymized life. And then we come to know right before all that happens that Tiana Taylor and Leonardo DiCaprio have, we think had a child together. So we go into the weird life of Leonardo Caprio and that child who was played as you mentioned by Chase Infinity, um, who was great and presumed innocent and is really good in this.
And they are living this weird father-daughter life under other names Bob in Willa Ferguson. And then trouble comes again and the trouble is comes in the figure of Sean Penn as Colonel Stephen j Laja. He was in love with Tiana Taylor and he's like also trying to gain memberships in some weird white supremacist group called the Christmas Adventurers.
So he's come back with a vengeance and all of a sudden this group of former revolutionaries is in trouble yet again. And navigating the sort of recrudescence of the past is the real meat of this. So 
Alex: beautiful job, an absolutely beautiful job in a hard situation. We're talking about two hours and 50 minutes of nonstop action. Nomi? Yes. You intrigued me with your initial review.
Tell us what you thought. 
Naomi: Okay. I think it's hard for me to completely extricate my response to the movie, um, from my expectations of the movie, which were, whether by professional writers or just like movie fans, PTA fans, specifically everything I was experiencing. Related to this movie was saying that this is a masterpiece unlike no other, the, the only great movie so far for the 21st century.
You know, on and on. I mean, I'm not even exaggerating. You know, I've, yeah, I definitely, I, I was seeing that form of take again and again. And so I think There's a lot of stuff I liked about this movie.
I think there are some amazing performances. I think it's gorgeously shot, I think it's action packed in a thrilling way, but ultimately I felt.
Unsatisfied by its politics. And I felt, I think, which is something that I occasionally feel with PTA in general, confused by the transition between different scales of it, the kind of like grand scale of like shootouts chases, you know, action sequences like across Hill and Dale, you know, like the, the, the, the, the grand expanse of California and the West, and hundreds and thousands of extras, you know, being, uh, shunted, hit and tether, you know, across the screen.
Um, and on the other hand, the kind of like more quiet, more minor relationality between characters. Each of these things might have worked for me in and of itself, but the transition between them was confusing. Like I felt like it didn't. It totally worked for me and I'm willing to mm-hmm. Speak more specifically about certain scenes if we would like to do so in, in the future, but that's just generally my if, if we would like to do so.
Alex: There's nothing I would like to do more than that. Yeah. Before we do though, I wanna know, Vincent, what you thought. 
Vinson: I thought that in a very straightforward sense this movie kind of rocked. Like it was just fun to watch. It is loud, it has great music. There are two important car chases. One, the one that ends with the capture of the Tiana Taylor character, Prolia Beverly Hills, and then one that comes later on.
And it's kind of really the climax of the film. And in this movie, the cars feel fast but also heavy. It's clear that they're not made for this use to be driven this fast and pushed this hard. And there was something about the extremity of the situations that, um, maybe the car chases are as a metaphor for just extremity that I really liked. Um, it seems to me to be a movie about fetishes, it just takes things that Americans know to be uncomfortable about and it's like.
That's what it's about. So the whole first part that's ostensibly about this political violence, these revolutionaries, there's a scene where, you know, Leo is in the back of a car with Tiana Taylor and they're kind of making out, this is when we first know that they're lovers and she's like, oh, you like black girls?
He's like, of course I like black girls. Why do you think I'm here? You know, it's like this sort of, all of a sudden the, the sort of interracial sort of miscegenation gaze is the point. And then Sean Penn, later on, after having his initial encounter with Tiana Taylor is looking at her through the scope of a gun and then notices Leo and then sees them first.
He, Leo's grabbing her ass a lot is made of her ass. It's like this very objectifying on purpose view. And then they kiss and he is like, you see him get mad and he has an encounter with Leo later on and he is like, you like black girls? I love black girls. It's like, it seemed to be. Maybe it is a political movie, but not political in terms of current events or ideologies, but more political in terms of deep, almost like libidinal things that we all share that the movie wants to peck out one by one.
So I admired it. I did hear the same things that you heard though, Naomi, like it's the best and I'm like, it's, it's not better than the Wolf of Wall Street. It's not better than a lot of movies from recent movies that I could think of. But I did really enjoy it.
Naomi: Mm-hmm. Okay. Alex, I can't wait to hear your words dear wise words. 
Alex: Well, I love hearing what both of you are saying  I also wanna say, I need to see this movie again.
Me too. Immediately upon seeing it, I was like, must rewatch, Now that I kind of know how PTA's laying it down, I need to absorb it. One thing I wanna say is, my God, what a filmmaker. The, the, the hours simply fly by faster than the cars that Vincent was just mentioning. The hours just peel by the entire first, I would say half an  hour of this movie is just a montage.  this radical group setting off explosions rating, this immigration detention center. Um, let's just take a moment to acknowledge that a big Hollywood movie is going right off the bat and saying, let's just depict an aspect of the American present that you're used to seeing on the news or or ignoring.
And let's just put it right in the heart of an action thriller. So there's that. Um. Nomi, you talked about this mixing of registers. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I found that to be fascinating too.  I think a lot of the movie is about trying to make reality and fantasy gel and the difficulty of that and the danger of trying to do it, and the beauty of trying to do it at the same times. Suddenly you've gone from this incredible montage where it's beyond action movie. It actually almost is kind of like a video game.
It's all stitched together by the music. And of course we have Johnny Greenwood's score, he's collaborating again with Paul Thomas Anderson to score this film. And so you've had this. Shoot him up. Situation. You've had ass grabbing, you've had fucking, you've had this incredible humiliation scene You have all of this and then suddenly you're in reality because a baby has arrived and the mother of that baby is sad and feels neglected and feels alone. When she was pregnant, she was shooting off a huge machine gun with her nine month pregnant belly, which is I think maybe one of those movie's.
Most distinctive images. Yes. Um, and suddenly she doesn't know what her role is. She's being told what her purpose is and she doesn't like it and she's chafing against it. And I was like, oh, that's real.  
Then you cut ahead to the most of the movies present, which is some 15 years later, and reality has really set in. Leo, who's now known as Bob, is this stoner ex radical dude who doesn't really know if it's day or night. And he and his daughter, who's very cool, who has it together, who studies karate, they live in this very isolated way in the northern California hills.
And I think again, reality and fantasy start to bleed. And of course, like the whole white supremacist angle, the Sean Penn character, the Lock Jaw character is also about fantasy. The fantasy first of all, of purity. Mm-hmm. Of like the classic white supremacist fantasy that there is such a thing as race, that there's such a thing as racial purity and that it can be achieved forcibly, you know, by you.
Um. And he wants to be accepted. He wants to be in. And so he starts off this like whole cuckoo chase that takes us like we should just talk, I think for a second about the tone of this movie. It's all over the place. It's all over the place in a way that I kind of enjoyed, like Yeah, it's very funny. Parts of this film are very funny.
Yeah, Leo's performance is hilarious. He's running around in a bathrobe and like wrap around shades, just stumbling and bumbling and trying to figure his stuff out. But like Nomi, you said you had questions about the film's politics, and I'm curious what you mean by it. 
Naomi:  To me, the movie was seemingly  about this present moment.But it's based or inspired by, I guess, pensions Vineland published in 1990, but is said in 1984.
Mm-hmm. And is about this sort of burnout hippie Lloyd Wheeler who much like Leo's character in the movie is kind of a hiding out in Northern California town. We call it Vineland in, in the novel, and is, it's sort of like he's in the Reagan eighties and it's looking retrospectively to the kind of like dashed idealism of the sixties, right?
Mm-hmm. And PTA has, has taken this kind of matrix and imported it into the present, and it seemed to me entirely anachronistic. I was like, 
Vinson: mm-hmm. 
Naomi: What is this revolutionary group called the French 75 No less, you know, kind of like weather, underground style kind of cell and you know, the, the sly and the family stone.
Thing. Mm-hmm. Vincent, that you mentioned is on point, I think, I guess, yeah. Because where the movie seems to be happening to me is kind of like the early seventies, you know, the sort of like the ideals of the sixties leading to sort of like violent action, you know, disillusionment with like peace and love and then cut to something like the eighties where all of that is kind of like in the past and, and all you can do is just smoke weed on the couch.
Right? And I was like, in what world is this happening? Obviously it represents the present moment in the sense, of course, like the, the migrant crisis, the ice. And so on. But I was like, this feels completely artificially imported into a moment in which this kind of action is really not the lingua franca.
You know?I was like, sorry, I'm not buying like Leo and Tiana Taylor is like revolutionaries working in a 2010, um, political cell, like apol. Like what? 
Vinson: Yeah. It 
Naomi: seemed almost like insulting to the current political moment  I find it a little bit like chafing when people are like, finally he's facing what America is facing. I'm like, is he, I mean, I did feel, the white supremacy part, which is, you know, the kind of like Christmas, adventurers, the Christmas adventurers, the Christmas adventurers.
Another cult that seemed to be, to me, very relevant and a very good satire of things that I feel like are actually happening in the culture. Mm-hmm. Right now, of course, it's like over overblown, over the top, it's funny, it's et cetera, but that seemed to me relevant to politics right now and like an answer to something that is like. you know, actually happening.
Vinson: One of my favorite things about this movie is like, someone from that group is dispatched to do a job. We won't talk too much about it because it might be a little spoily. But as he does this job, he's in a car.
He is driving a car real fast, which is great. As aforementioned, he is wearing a bright red Lacoste shirt. For those that don't know the brand Lacoste, it's like sort of a preppy brand that made a sort of version of the polo shirt, except it's got an alligator on it, but it was like bright red thing that sort of melds preppy heritage America with the kitsch of contemporary fascism.
It was like a Gentil MAGA hat. And I was like, this filmmaker did not make that mistake. That's a reference. This guy is wearing a MAGA hat, but he's also descended from the Mayflower. And something about that is one of the other absurdities of our moment. The sort of, um, the. Garish, uh, extremities to which, uh, a formerly sort of Gente elite have, have sort of bend themselves toward in fatty to Trump.
I'm like, that's about fucking Trump. Okay. I'm sorry. Um, and I liked the way some of these jokes had a sort of far out valence, but we're also right on the nose. I felt that shirt was one of the better jokes in the movie, I thought. 
Alex: I hear you. And I had many of the same feelings. I think our present reality has, has far outstripped most depictions of it.
And we're in a place that's very, very, very extreme. But is putting a version, a weird, twisted, very cinematic version of it, slipping it into this kind of caper, is that delivering us to somewhere that, you know, gets people to think or to look or to feel. Like, this is a question I have. There's a great character I love in this movie played by Benicio del Toro called Sensei, who runs the, uh, martial arts studio where, uh, where Teenage Willis studies and he's just fantastic.
And he's doing a, he calls it a kind of Latino Harriet Tubman thing. Mm-hmm. With, um, a bunch of undocumented people. He's hiding them in this apartment complex where he lives and has a kind of root to get them in and out. So I was like, please, I would like to know more about you and watch that.
Vinson: Yeah. But I do wanna say about this revolutionary violence thing.
One of the benefits of working on the broad level of like libido and archetype is sometimes you catch the present very much in your net. And the whole time I was watching this movie, I was thinking about the fact that last week, Assata Shakur died. Mm-hmm. Who was a member of the Black Liberation Army, which was inspired like the French 75, in part by the Algerian independence movement.
At one point, Leo was watching the movie, the Battle of Algiers. Yeah. Um, and I, I don't know if PTA was thinking about asada, but. The Tiana Taylor character. I mean, there are some big similarities. The BLA, you know, they bombed government facilities, they did bank robberies, they did all this kind of stuff.
Asada was convicted for the murder of a, uh, you know, a New Jersey State Trooper, I believe, went to prison, escaped from prison with the help of the BLA and other organizations, and left and went to Cuba and was, you know, died free in a, I mean, in a certain way, the Tiana Taylor character is like, kind of like an unserious Asad Shakur. 
Alex: in a minute. How does one battle after another fit into Paul Thomas Anderson's filmography? This is Critics at Large from the New Yorker. Don't go away.
:: MIDROLL 1 :: 
        I NEED A CRITIC / HORROR CALL-OUT
Alex: So we've been talking about one battle after another,  and I think there's still a lot more to say about it and to digest there. But I do wanna turn us to some other PTA films that we've loved because this man casts a along shadow. Nomi, I'm going right to you. I know that you love Boogie Nights, which is PTA's second feature.
Certainly his breakout Tell us all about it. 
Naomi: To me, boogie Nights is a perfect movie for me. Like he. He's never reached the heights that he reached in Boogie Nights. And just as a synopsis, this is about Paul Thomas Anderson's, uh, home environment.
It's about the San Fernando Valley in the 1970s. Uh, Eddie Adams, a young dishwasher at a kind of a club, a disco club in, in the valley in the late seventies is discovered by this, uh, porn director and producer played by Burt Reynolds because he hears that Eddie has an especially large member.
Eddie turns into Dirk Diggler, his mm-hmm. 
Vinson: Nom 
Naomi: the plume. No, the foreign dick. Nam. Dick, yes. And rises in the porn industry, which is kind of like, um. At the point at which the movie begins, a kind of like still film rather than videotaped is, uh, kind of like still enjoys the kind of like free love, kind of fun in the, in the sun communal, I guess ethos of, of the sixties.
And, uh, uh, Dirk Diggler becomes a big star, um, in, in more and more ways than one. 
        CLIP - BOOGIE NIGHTS
And the movie is kind of like split two. There's like, the first half of it about is about the rise of Eddie and is a kind of like sunny, optimistic, progressive vision. And then the second half of the movie is the eighties where things begin to go dark.
And it's about the fall of, of Dirk with a kind of like optimistic slight rise at the end potentially. And. This movie is so perfect to me because it, everything is exactly calibrated scale wise.   It has a large ensemble cast. It's long, it's, uh, quite plot heavy, but it doesn't forget about character and about relationships and the scale of it is calibrated exactly for kind of like coherence, satisfaction and enjoyment.
The performances are amazing. It's a very satisfying movie, and it's a movie that makes a statement about culture, about America, about society, about a certain point in American life. And in that sense it's political. I mean, not. Political with a small PI guess not, not large p like it's, I think 
Vinson: it's Dirk Diler has a large p 
Naomi: Yeah, it's, yes, it's true.
He does. That's the large P of the movie, but it's also about people. And I don't think any side of this equation between kind of like a larger statement and relationships say, or characters, uh, none of, uh, these sides is a loser in the equation. Perfectly calibrated. 
Vinson: Mm-hmm. I think I like billion nights also, because it really inaugurates.
The thing that I think is undersung about PTA is that like he's also a very silly comedian. Mm-hmm. All the moments when, you know, Dirk drops his pants and it looks like the holy grail has arrived. Like 
Naomi:  that is an enormous cock. 
Vinson: Yeah. In one battle after another, somebody says, you know. I believe she was a sperm thief and another guy says, A semen demon.
A semen demon. I think that all day today he likes silly jokes, but grounds them in this way that I think you're totally like, he's got it like a high school boy in him. Yeah. But uses it to sort of get us closer and closer to understanding character and plot and situation. Yeah. Um, and I think Boogie Nets is like the example Par excellence of that.
Alex: Yeah. 
Vinson: Impulse. Yeah. 
Alex: Well, Vincent, is there a Paul Thomas Anderson movie that you particularly like? 
Vinson: I love the master. 
Naomi: Ooh. Who Meets 
Vinson: You? I like the master too. The, I, I like, I like the master, um, Joaquin Phoenix as a troubled military vet who by hook and crook falls under the influence of, uh, to me a resplendent Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is, we're given to understand a kind of stand in for Elron Hubbard.
It's kind of about the sort of genesis of Scientology and it uses the, the situation where, you know, the person is kind of undergoing these psychological rigors in a one-on-one session with the, the administer of this kind of whatever.
Um, as a kind of like dialectical exercise, it's really about these two people and a spiritual, psychological struggle of dominance. And like mastership, 
        CLIP - THE MASTER
it's like, again, beautifully shot all. Every time I think about this movie, I think about the multiple shots of them in a boat. Uh, just a picture of the turbulent wake of the boat.
And in a similar way, the relationship between these two men is like got a sweet edge and a totally dementedly violent edge. And it's among my favorite performances of these both, uh, Phoenix and Hoffman, RIP. And. I think that's the thing that happens a lot, which is PTA is really good at bringing out the best in an already like superlative performer.
Mm-hmm. To keep bringing this back to one battle after another. This is the movie that helped me realize, oh yeah. Oh wait. Leo DiCaprio has kind of always been one of my favorite actors. If I had made the list, he wouldn't have made it, but it's only because he's like water from a faucet. I was gonna say, 
Alex: because he's like water.
'cause you take him for granted. No, he's amazing. He is life giving. 
Vinson: Leo's amazing. I'm here 
Alex: for it. He's 
Vinson: an epic actor. Sometimes people talk about actors as like storytellers and sometimes I'm like, whatever. But Leo actually is, when I see him, I'm like, yeah, I'll watch this movie for four hours because I know he's gonna change.
He we're gonna see him now and then we 10 years from now, his face is gonna be more weathered. But we're gonna see the spark of the former per all that shit. And similarly, like the two men and the master go on that kind of epic journey. Um, we talk about ambition, you know, just the sort of chronology of.
Long change over time, uh, is something that the master to me has in common with one battle after another. And I, I really appreciate it. 
Alex: Uh, you're making me, when you mention, um, Philip Seymour Hoffman, I think, you know, one of the, one of the things that I love about Paul Thomas Anderson's filmography is that you can see those changes in Philip Seymour Hoffman over time because he was a performer who Paul Thomas Anderson worked with.
Mm-hmm. So often from the start. 
Yeah. You know, you talk about the humor of Paul Thomas Anderson, which is such a key, like in a way you can kind of divide the movies up. Um mm-hmm. And then I think something, maybe like one battle after another is trying to combine some of these qualities that Paul Thomas Anderson has. Like, you have funny, like movies where he's just letting his kind of off kilter humor really lead, like Punch Drunk Love is a great example of that from 2002 with Adam Sandler.
Like he went and he made an Adam Sandler movie, and he, like, I, I really think that's what he wanted to do. He wanted to give us an Adam Sandler movie, but to make the Adam Sandler character as dark and sad, but also beautiful as we know, Adam Sandler can be another Undersung actor who, who is like, water Loves Sandler, who's like an American utility.
Mm-hmm. So my selection to bring to our little Paul Thomas and Anderson round table is. There will be blood. Mm. From 2007 seven. My name 
Naomi: is Daniel Plainview. My name is Daniel Plainview. I drink your milkshake. I drink 
Alex: it up. So good. There's something about There will be Blood. I feel like this is the movie in which PTA let himself get as far into just the visuals of filmmaking just becoming a pure sin ast.
Um, as he would ever do, he has his score. It was the first time he worked with Johnny Greenwood, which is so key to that movie and became so key to the movies after. It's worth saying that he's a filmmaker who often dips into directing music videos and music. And what music brings to the emotion, to the tension, to the pacing of his movies is so key.
Vinson: Mm-hmm. 
Alex: And there will be Blood as a movie about American ambition. Greed, the despoil of land. It's just about rapaciousness. All kinds of rapaciousness. We have the incredible character of, um, Eli Sunday played by Paul Dano with his just like so beautiful peeled potato face fucked up where Oh my God.
Going against that, like the pointed grizzle of, um, Daniel Day Lewis.
        CLIP - THERE WILL BE BLOOD
Yeah. And what I love about it is a kind of biblical quality. It is about good and evil, but there's not very much good. 
Vinson: Mm-hmm. 
Alex: It's about an oil man who wants to extract from the earth every penny he, he can, who will stop at nothing to do it, who will lie and cheat and, um, falsely confess his way into acquisition and who will be left much like Citizen Kane with a bounty that he kind of has no use for.
Mm-hmm. And doesn't know what to do with. And that's a very classically American story. Daniel Plainview is a huge villain. He's, he's, he's an anti-hero. He's, he's an evil, evil man who represents a lot of what's wrong with America.
But he's riveting and he's beautiful, and he's terrifying in a way that, like in one battle after another, the Sean Penn character is just laughable. And I loved his performance. Mm-hmm. I think it's a great performance, but there's no part of you that wants to be inside What's going on with that 
Vinson: guy? You don't, you don't wanna walk like that duck.
Alex: I would love to do a little duck walk. You don't wanna do a little fucking weird, a literal duck walk, just kind of quack, quack. And as he goes, um, whereas in there will be blood. I think it's kind of asking you to look at what made the world you live in and it's men like this. Mm-hmm. And here you are in his face and one of the most beautiful shots in the movie, Daniel Day Lewis' Face, is smeared in oil.
That of course looks like blood. So. You know, are you clean? It's just a gorgeous work of art and I love it. Um, and then I love that Paul Thomas Anderson can give us something like, you know, phantom thread also with Daniel Day Lewis from 2017 about a very finicky and persnickety dress maker from 1950s London who likes things just so, but is equally intent on control, right?
Like when I look at these movies and I wonder what you guys think about this domination and control mm-hmm. Is very much a theme that I see. Masculinity is very much a theme that I see, which goes hand in hand with that we have these battles of mm-hmm. Like Vincent, you mentioned the master. And the master is about kind of the attempt of one domineering man to make and break and master another.
Naomi: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think one scene in the master, I don't know if you guys recall, but Amy Adams, who plays, uh, the Master's wife jerks him off into the sink. Yes. Remember that? Yes. So this is a man who's, you know, all encompassing, you know, he's, he's the master. Mm-hmm. What, what could be more kind of like dominating, domineering, and yet Alex, I think it's so correct what you're saying.
And it's the same with Fon thread, for instance. This man who seeks control at all costs and yet is revealed at particular moments to absolutely desire the release of control that, you know, brief scene in the master mm-hmm. Like remains in my mind as the kind of like, okay, she's gonna take over now I'm just gonna be like a, an object in her, in her hands, in her paws.
Right. Um, and it's the same, uh, Sean Penn in one battle after another. It's a comical portrayal of the same thing. I think. I mean, from the very beginning of the movie, Prolia Beverly Hills, uh, arrives at the tent or the barracks, whatever, where Sean Penn is kind of sitting guard and with a gun, basically overtakes him, but overtakes him kind of with his agreement in some sense.
Vinson: Mm-hmm. 
Naomi:  She makes him, you know, gain an erection by her, overpowering him. Right. And he is a willing, in fact, uh, a yearning participant in this exchange of power. Yeah. Please somebody take away my power. Absolutely. While also being incredibly intent on retaining that power. Yeah. More generally. 
Vinson: Yeah, 
Alex: totally. I think the will to dominate, the will to submit. I think these things are in interesting conversation. His movies. Let me mention a movie that we have yet to discuss that is one that I personally wrestle with, and in fact, I rewatched it recently. Mm-hmm. And I feel, even though I don't love it, that I'm gonna keep rewatching it to try to figure out what is going on with my feelings about it. Inherent vice. Mm-hmm. From 2014 PTA Loves Thomas Pin.
Inherent Vice is much more faithful to the book. It's, it's shambolic. It's mm-hmm. Roving I don't love this movie. When I first saw it, I hated it. And I walked outta the theater. I was like, walked out in the middle. Yeah.
Naomi:  Yeah. I watched it. I can't until the end, but I, but I remember very much I agree with you. I, 
Alex: I really didn't like it. I'm just like, am I being forced in this movie to confront my own rigidness? 
Naomi:  I was like, what's the point? I don't understand. I was, I was literally love struggling to understand.
I was like, am I stupid Love? Maybe I'm Love it. Love it. I feel a little bit like I'm stupid around it. Yeah. And yet, and yet, no, me, we're not. 
Vinson: I think it's the, the movie of his that I've seen that most, uh, alludes to and is a product of his history as a music video director, because it really is kind of like it's stitched together by mood affect.
Music often, and by the like, sort of comedic acting of Joaquin Phoenix. There's a moment when he gets hit by a baseball bat and he's like, the way he goes out is Pure Bugs Bunny. Yes, it's good. Yeah, it's hilarious. I don't like it as much as any movie that we've talked about today, but I do think aesthetically one battle after another is closer to that than any other, other, I mean, uh, not just the pension thing, but the kind of.
Dreaminess of the visuals and, and, and specifically of the transitions, the, the broad scope and its engagement with, maybe this is one way to divide the of, some of them are really character studies that deal with like, intimacies and relationships, but these two seem to engage, um, like pension with the idea of like the systems novel.
Mm. That it's the, it's about a broader scope. Maybe Magnolia might fit into this as well, but it's like a systems cinema and then he has a personal cinema, 
Alex: but they do overlap. I mean, there is this, again, like this only connect this need for connection at the heart of that movie too, you have 
Vinson: Yeah.
Alex: Joaquin Phoenix playing Docs Sportello, who's a stoned sort of private investigator and you have his ex lover and. True love Shasta played by, um, Catherine Waterson, I wanna say. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And actually, one of my favorite scenes in the movie, again, a movie I don't particularly love, but I think about the scene all the time, is a sex scene that happens between them.
And it's a great sex scene. It's, it's very sexy. It's very sad. It's about the moment where two people can truly be together surrounded by a bunch of moments in which they can't. 
Vinson: Yeah. But it seems like even just like the father daughter thing in one battle after another, I think the thematic heat is not with that moment.
I think you like it. I like it because we like stuff like that. Even PTA says this, I don't think one battle after another cares that much about the father-daughter thing with those, with Leo and Chase and Fan. I think that's, that's all he cares about. Think, I think 
Alex: he SI think he says it, doesn't he say, he's like, say that, that 
Vinson: that's the reason I don't the movie.
That's not what I'm gonna remember about that movie. At all. They're not even in it together that much. Yeah. I just don't feel the heat is not there. I 
Alex: don't, I I agree with, that's how I feel and I feel in the same way 
Vinson: with the heat is not there with inherent life. Both of those movies are really interested in like conspiracy and the individual is, is a part of a bigger thing.
Alex: So as we've mentioned, one battle after another is Anderson's first film in decades to be set today or in a slightly anachronistic version of today. So how is this Master of the Period film approaching our own period? That's in a minute on critics at large from the New Yorker.
:: MIDROLL 2 :: 
Alex: All right. We've been talking 
PTA, we've been talking what we love, what we don't love quite as much. I wanna come back to this question of the present and how this film does or doesn't work in and with the present. Paul Thomas Anderson has been talking about adapting Vineland since at least the time when he did inherent vice.
There were interviews then where he said he would like to do another pension. He loves Vineland. I had heard he wanted to make it earlier after Phantom Thread, but he needed the cast of Licorice Pizza. Who? Cooper Hoffman, so on. He, he needed them right where he had him then, so he made that movie. But now at this bizarre moment, this movie arrives, I mean, from the interviews I've seen, and I wonder what you guys think about this, like I don't think it's PTA is like thrilled that some of this stuff feels a little on the nose.
Like he's not delighted that there's an extreme topical relevance here to like a bunch of leftwing assassins. And frankly, I myself am surprised, you know, when we discussed Edington, the Aria Asra movie that came out this summer, I was skeptical to the point of rageful that there was a, an Antifa, or maybe it was a false flag, whatever.
We're not gonna re-litigate that, but that there was this kind of figure of mm-hmm. Violent, supremely armed, left. Um. And now we're living in the reality we're living in, which is post Charlie Kirk assassination, and suddenly this stuff doesn't seem as fanciful anymore, What do you guys make of this moment and how it's being depicted on screen? 
Naomi: I think we are living through momentous times and I think it's completely understandable that audiences would like to see these times depicted on screen and would want to see some form of resistance to some of the more, uh, insidious aspects of the times we're living in depicted on screen.
I can totally understand why he would feel. Uh, I don't know. Annoyed that, it just so happens that this movie that he's been obviously working on for a long time and thinking about for a long time, lands at exactly this particular moment because I don't think he is a topical filmmaker.
I think he's political in the sense that his movies often deal with America. They deal with power,  all the things that we've been talking about. Of course, all of these things are, are political, but he's not a filmmaker that responds to particular issues in the political landscape. As they come, 
It didn't also seem to me that the people in the French 75 and the political in the Gorilla group in the movie even necessarily had kind of like an ideological sense of what they were doing, you know? Which also made me a little upset because I was like, okay. To me, it's totally fine if a movie doesn't wanna deal.
Like, I mean, indeed, like, please, I, I love movies that don't necessarily deal directly with like, the various crises that we're encountering on the ground mm-hmm. In present Day America. But if you're gonna, if you're gonna do it, then like make it convincing I wasn't buying it.
Vinson: Yeah. 
Naomi: And so I was like, I was stuck between these two feelings of like, is it, is it not? And if it is, then like, do, do we even really care? Is it just like a status size? Like what the fuck is happening here? And if not, then why make it into present day? Then why have like the detention centers then why have the, by the way, quite faceless migrants, you know, escaping in the, you know, sort of tunnels and, and you know, Benicio del Torres, which was a more, somewhat more convincing depiction of actual on the ground, you know, caring about actual people, but, and yet mm-hmm.
Still kind of felt like a, an excuse for a caper. 
Vinson: Yeah. this is why I don't buy, I just feel like when people do something that is so about today, and then they act like
Naomi: Oh, I'm not political. Oh, this is about a father and a and a daughter.
Vinson: It kind of annoys me. and it's like, okay.
He's trying to talk about the present in a way that, that thought was like, uh, get broad or get specific, but don't like, be in, in the middle. Um. But there are really, I think, kind of electric moments. I wonder, this is a movie that I wonder what it will feel like to watch five years from now, I guess
Alex: Yeah. I think some of this is like  What I think Paul Thomas Anderson is trying to do.. a huge key to the movie for me is the Gil Scott Heron song. The Revolution will Not be Televised. Mm-hmm. This is a song that the members of the French 75 use as a passcode to one another. You know, the point of the song the Revolution will not be televised is frankly, that when the revolution comes.
You're gonna get off your ass, you're gonna get out of the movie theater, right? And you're gonna be in the streets, right? And life is gonna be different. And there aren't gonna be commercials and there isn't gonna be Warner Brothers giving you 140 to $170 million to make your movie. And I feel like Paul Toms Anderson is walking that line and seeing if he can have it a bit both ways.
Can he televise the revolution? Can he film the revolution? And he knows that he can't. Like we're dealing with a failed revolution. We're dealing with, with a bunch of people who thought that like sending off bombs and shooting people and even like doing something liberatory, like cutting open the wire at an ice migration detention center would make a difference.
Um, and none of it has made a difference. 'cause in the present, those are the forces that are still being reckoned with. But. Do you still need to try? Do you still need to film the revolution? Do you still need to participate in the revolution? Like that's what I think the movie is about. Mm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
And, and this is, you know, also just like the possible power of a big Hollywood movie. Like if people come out to see this movie is about just getting on the same page a little bit, even if it's Paul Thomas Anderson's out there page,  What I mean by this is the very atomized experience of scrolling on social media where some of us see, um, videos of ice beating up as, you know, a widely circulated video last week beating up, um, a mother just trying to ask where her husband went.
You know, some absolutely 
Vinson: gutting the worst thing I've ever seen. 
Alex: And yet. I know that many people are not seeing that video and that's just like a, not a part of many people's visual presence   And I've seen Paul Thomas Anderson do the stuff that directors always do when they shoot on film, which is to be like, see this movie in a theater? It's made on film Capital F and I'm all for that. I'm all for film. Go Vista Vision. You're having your moment.
Love it for you. Like that's great. But I think another like, and perhaps this isn't just inexcusably cheesy, but another big part of the movie is like seeing it together. Being together. Mm-hmm. Um. It's a movie that is gonna draw different kinds of audiences because it's a multiracial movie. A lot of movies like are not Yeah.
It's a white director, as you were saying, Vincent, who's like dealing with black people in a way that most white directors don't. Yep. Um, so I think that's the optimism of it in a way. It's not necessarily the message at the end of the film, which is like the shell continue on. 
Vinson: Mm-hmm. 
Alex: Um, I didn't find that optimistic.
I didn't find the idea that a failed movement continuing on in diminished form in the future was going to be so encouraging. Like, that's not making me happy, but what is making me feel something good? Mm-hmm. Is the attempt to like, get everyone together to look this in the face. I like that. 
Naomi: And that really is inextricable from the movie's ambition and the, and the fact that industry got behind it, because that size of thing, that reach doesn't happen without the backbone of big money. 
Alex: I have friends who feel like this movie could change the world. I'm not a person who thinks that, but I guess the movie is making a case for what I know.
No dude. I know. But I guess the movie is making a case for like, it's about failed radicals. It's making a case ultimately for incremental action and for just carrying something forward. Mm-hmm. And and like the inevitable failure of the grand gesture. And so maybe that's what we must hold onto. It is what it is.
Vinson: It's about humanity struggle to remember the 
Alex:  password Exactly.
Alex: This has been Critics at Large. This week's episode was produced by Michelle O'Brien. Alex Barish is our consulting editor. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Conde Nast's head of Global Audio is Chris Bannon. Alexis Quadra composed our theme music and we had engineering help today from James Yost with Mixing by Mike Kuman.
You can find every episode of Critics at Large at New yorker.com/critics.