Michael Mann thinks One Battle After Another perfectly captures the climate of modern America
One Battle After Another is currently seeing praise from audiences, from complimenting the performances to giving accolades to Paul Thomas Anderson’s filmmaking. Steven Spielberg even enthusiastically told Anderson, “What an insane movie, oh my God. There is more action in the first hour of this than every other film you’ve ever directed put together. Everything, it is really incredible. This is such a concoction of things that are so bizarre and at the same time so relevant, that I think have become increasingly more relevant than perhaps even when you finished the screenplay and assembled your cast and crew and began production.”
As Spielberg touched on, on top of the praise the film is getting for its craft, One Battle After Another is also very politically charged and World of Reel reports on director Michael Mann’s reaction to that aspect of the movie. Mann recently did an interview with Le Point, where he discussed the current political climate of America and how One Battle After Another captured it. He explained,
What’s happening to us is very serious; it affects everyone’s life and it’s an extremely complex issue. A relevant film I recommend for understanding the broader crisis America is going through is One Battle After Another by Paul Thomas Anderson. Today’s crisis has little to do with the political struggles of the 20th century, which I lived through. Back then, when there was only one medium — television — Walter Cronkite’s CBS report in 1968, during the Battle of Hué, became a turning point that shifted public opinion against the war. We’re no longer in that world. With social networks, interconnection is so intense it creates a dynamic of overload.”
But it wasn’t entirely praise from the New Hollywood giants when it came to One Battle After Another, with Francis Ford Coppola on the more conflicted side when it came to his review. In a lengthy post on Instagram, Coppola wrote that he loves the films of PTA but feels like this one requires a second viewing. “For me, after one audience viewing, I felt that just as things were getting going, there came a 16-year pause. Although now that I know that, for subsequent viewings, I will be able to enjoy focusing on the characters and all the memorable performances of Leo, Sean, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Tony Goldwyn and Chase Infiniti. It’s a film I want to see a second time: the problem with my hearing no doubt played a part in my confusion on certain things, but then the film emerged into the love story that it is; father and his one daughter, and as you can imagine, very moving to me.”
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