It is not often that we get to hear of Steven Spielberg coming out from the theater almost in a state of ecstasy, and that, it seems, is precisely what Paul Thomas Anderson has managed with ‘One Battle After Another’. The legendary Spielberg confessed after the exclusive screening in the Los Angeles theater that he had already viewed this epic, which runs almost three hours, thrice, and you know what? He is still not over it!
However, Spielberg’s reaction was not the tip-of-the-hat kind of polite and professional acknowledgment that sometimes filmmakers share sometimes. But his reaction for the upcoming film, One Battle After Another, was pure admiration. “What an insane movie, oh my God,” he said, while pointing out that the first hour had more raw energy than anything Anderson ever made. To him, this film shares the very select company of Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove.” Which, by the way, is not only for its comic bite, but for its power to mirror the present political and cultural turmoil with a wit keen enough to sting everyone. His take was extremely simple, and sums up how the movie makes you laugh, but only because the alternative is screaming your lungs out.
Anderson Strips Vineland to Its Core, Letting a Stellar Cast Carry the Emotional Weight
Anderson, on the other hand, was incredibly open about the messy process of this adaptation. Thomas Pynchon’s ‘Vineland’ is no easy novel to pin down, and Anderson said he found himself having to break his own heart to cut and shape it for the story he wants to tell. But what emerged was the father-daughter arc, because it is a story about revolution, regret, and family that resonated with him even more after he’d become a father himself. At its base, that’s layered with the type of sprawling, offbeat detail only PTA could effectively weave together without it showing for the reasons that are obvious.
The cast seems to have taken Anderson’s vision even further. Leonardo DiCaprio, completing his lifelong dream of working with the director, takes the lead as a worn-out radical in search of his missing daughter. Spielberg could not resist making fun of DiCaprio’s tendency of rushing to the playback monitor after his takes, which Anderson confirmed with a laugh, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter. Sean Penn, on the other hand, has given Spielberg a performance that he declared was his all-time favorite Penn performance, which says a lot about someone who has witnessed it all. Benicio del Toro was called in as a pinch hitter, and it appears he arrived pretending to be unprepared, but was soon swamped at the set with his ideas.
VistaVision Lives, Pynchon Returns, and Cinema Finds Its Pulse Again
As far as the visual elements of this movie are concerned, Anderson opted for the vintage VistaVision and restored old cameras that most filmmakers would display in a dusty museum corner. In this case, it’s not a matter of nostalgia for its own sake; the grain, the size, and the fragility of the film corresponded to the messy rhythm of the story. Spielberg, who has always stood up for film, is obviously pleased with the result. There’s definitely something fitting about One Battle After Another dropping at a time when Pynchon himself reappears with his first novel in over a decade. It’s like a very rare convergence, one that sees Anderson, DiCaprio, Penn, del Toro, Spielberg watching from the sidelines, and Pynchon himself thrusting his latest work into the world. For movie and book buffs, this autumn season is more than just looking good for us, it’s looking pretty historic.
