Flash forward to the mid 2020s, and Paul Thomas Anderson is rightly regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers alive. His latest film, One Battle After Another, is officially out in theatres and finds him, for the first time in his career, at the age of 55, at his most explicitly political. The periods covered in the film are left purposefully ambiguous, but it doesn’t take a PhD in Film Studies to connect the dots to America today. How much of the film is a creative protest to Trump 2.0 and the current crackdown on immigration that is sweeping the nation2, and how much of it is just PTA cracking his storytelling knuckles? Does Anderson have his own Dora Maar, a muse that inspired him to loosely adapt Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland into his own epic action-thriller centered around a chaotic group of anti-fascist activists? As the questions swirl, one thing is clear. One Battle After Another is a visceral piece of political art that makes a statement with the same blunt force trauma that I imagine Guernica carried when it was first unveiled, all those decades ago.

Anderson is even more direct in his approach that Picasso was - something which took me by surprise when I first saw the film, five days ago. Eschewing the delicacy of a paintbrush, Anderson opts to paint his strokes with a crowbar. It was hard for me to recognize the director who successfully balanced his themes and characters on a wire stretched across the full spectrum of the human condition in Magnolia (1999), or the sophisticated master of period filmmaking who peels the onion of romance down to its dark and beautiful center in Phantom Thread (2017). Even closest cousins Inherent Vice (2014) and Licorice Pizza (2021) feel like distant relatives despite similar uninhibited styles, because they’re wrapped in an elliptical allure that feels missing from the abrasive and abrupt One Battle After Another.

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For his canvas, PTA chose a relic from the past - VistaVision. Similar to Picasso, who dug up archaic modes to paint Guernica as a monochromatic mural featuring mythical creatures, Anderson resurrects a dead format to create something purposefully anachronistic that demands our attention. “It’s so old, it’s new” as Marlene Dietrich says in Touch of Evil (1958). The fact that only four movie theatres in the whole world can actually project the film as it is intended to be seen makes it all the more precious and coveted. But marketing gimmicks are for mere mortals; PTA’s purpose with VistaVision is to use its expressive format as a way to accentuate his barstrokes.

The 1:50:1 aspect ratio makes the film feel condensed and compact, the symmetry of so many centered compositions is all the more prevalent in a square, driving the story perpetually forward as it steamrolls ahead. The deep colors, and that grainy, tactile texture our digital world hasn’t found a way to replicate just yet, adds to the feeling that we stumbled on a recently-unearthed 60s classic. I feel super lucky to be living close to London, one of three cities that can screen the film in its intended format. Needless to say, it looks and sounds in-fucking-credible in VistaVision. When I watched the film a second time, projected on standard widescreen digital, the difference was palpable.

The film is a bombastic, breathless escapade - unapologetically Guernica-esque in the starkly black-and-white way it carves the lines between the good guys and the bad guys with that crowbar. I can’t think of another film that pits Chaotic Good against Lawful Evil with such sharp contrast. We know exactly who we need to root for, there is no in-between, there is no gray, and there is no sliver of daylight between the creator and his left-wing activist creations, battling on screen.

While Guernica delivers its political message as buntly as One Battle After Another does, the painting is conceptually complex and symbolically ambiguous in ways that the film is not. That’s how it felt five days ago, at least. I’ve become too accustomed to the layered depths of PTA’s previous masterpieces, the intellectual mind-fucks and oblique cerebral experiences. With films like There Will Be Blood (2007) and The Master (2012) - cathedrals of cinema that resonate with profound meaning and eternal grandeur - Anderson set his own bar pretty damn high. And my tastes in film have been heliotropically-inclined towards auteurist, intellectually probing cinema, like a flower is to the sun, since a young age.

No wonder, then, that Anderson’s strikingly conventional approach in One Battle After Another stumped me at first. Critics like to use the word “accessible” just so they can avoid the dirtier synonym. For this is doubtlessly Paul Thomas Anderson at his most crowd-pleasingly…*gulp*…mainstream.

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When I saw the film for a second time, just yesterday, with the weight of expectation lifted, I realized something. The blunt force trauma Anderson’s assertive brushstrokes delivered in VistaVision made me dizzy to PTA’s signatures underneath the politics of the film. From Jonny Greenwood’s monumental, reverberant score (you only need to hear and feel it once to know it’s his best yet) to Sean Penn’s otherworldly performance as the grotesque Col. Steven Lockjaw - an instantly iconic villain destined for a spot in cinema’s all-time Rogue’s Gallery - everything feels designed to be imposing.

This includes the film’s breakneck pace, which hurtles forward with the kinetic energy of an escaped lunatic, frothing at the mouth in his straight jacket as he flees his asylum wardens. Editor Andy Jurgensen picks up right where he left off with the exhilarating ending of Licorice Pizza and let’s it rip. Cinema’s magical ability to freeze time is strong in this one; 2 hours and 40 minutes have never felt more like 1 hour.

Critics have showered the film in a hyper-rapturous orgasm of praise from the moment it had its World Premiere in Los Angeles a few weeks ago. “Greatest of the year!” “Decade!” “Century!” “All Time!” “Masterpiece!!” “Beyond a masterpiece!” And there’s no doubt I fell victim to expectation. Unable to escape the online euphoria, I allowed myself to wonder… could it be? Now that the aftershocks have settled, and I enjoyed it for what it was rather than what I wanted or expected it to be a second time around, I can confidently say that it’s not, but that’s not to say that there isn’t more than meets the eye.

There is enough brilliance in the film that not an hour has passed since I walked out of the Odeon Leicester Square theatre, five days ago, that I haven’t thought about it. I love the uncompromising bravado of the score and the performances. I love that it subverts the typical role of the lead, played by the mighty Leonardo DiCaprio at his most hysterical and baffled, to the point of making him a supporting player in his own movie. A lost man with all heart and no plan. I love Teyana Taylor’s performance as Perfidia, such a commanding presence in the first act that it hovers throughout the rest of the film, like a ghost haunting everyone’s every move. The climactic car chase, on an unforgettable road paved with more suspense than asphalt, is one of PTA’s most exhilarating, hypnotic sequences of his career. Cinema is rarely this pure nowadays.

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What One Battle After Another lacks in intellectual heft, it makes up in undeniable entertainment value. Without a doubt the most hilarious and heart-racing of Anderson’s films. To quote Benicio Del Toro’s unforgettable, stoic Sensei Sergio, it’s heavy metal man. It’s also more emotional and poignant the second time around, Chase Infiniti’s performance as young Willa shines all the brighter. Beneath the surface, the film is about the bonds of parenting and especially the responsibilities of fatherhood - a signature PTA theme that trickles over from his greatest masterpieces - which transcends governments, revolutions and politics. Distilled down to its essence, it hits hard and deep. If there is a Dora Maar-type muse in PTA’s life that influenced him to make this movie, I strongly suspect it’s his own kids.

With Guernica, Pablo Picasso created his most public and accessible work at the age of 55. Off the beaten avant-garde path he’d been so well known and admired for, ending up somewhere more universal, with a highly charged political piece of art. With One Battle After Another, Paul Thomas Anderson created his most accessible work at the age of 55. Off the beaten auteurist path he’s been so well known and admired for, ending up somewhere more universal, with a highly charged political piece of art. Both men layer in a deeper message beneath the veneer of their respective creations; beneath Picasso’s Spanish Civil War and revulsion to bombing lies a deeper meditation on human suffering and myth of civilizational strength and order. Beneath the surface of Anderson’s portrait of a politically-charged and divided America lies a deeper allegory on parenting. Given that Picasso painted Guernica practically on the eve of World Word 2 as literal fascists ruled Europe, one can understand why his piece yearns for a world of order. On the other hand, Anderson’s One Battle After Another is made in a time when the word ‘fascist’ is thrown around too loosely, so he’s understandably more willing to embrace chaos over lawful order. As long as the heart is in the right place.

The parallels between these two artists and their two hybrid political artworks is uncanny, but time will tell how far it will truly hold. Will One Battle After Another end up being Anderson’s Guernica? The centerpiece of his oeuvre once all is said and done? It’s obviously way too early to tell, despite what some critics are saying. Given that Guernica was painted in the context of actual war and fascism, its cultural resonance as a profoundly moving anti-war symbol makes a lot of sense. It’s very sincere with its politics, because it had to be. I can’t see One Battle After Another reaching those lofty heights, given that the cultural context it was filmed in is largely defined by cynical rhetoric and not actual WW2-style totalitarian takeover. It’s much more satirical with its politics, because it can afford to be.

Paul Thomas Anderson is Picasso with a crowbar, disguising a love-letter to parenting and fatherhood in the form of a political thriller. The lack of a challenging narrative and the usual auteur-driven thematic depth we are accustomed to from him is definitely missing, but a second viewing of the film does beg the question: so, what? Does every piece of art have to be intellectually stimulating in order to resonate and reach great heights? Some stories don’t need to be told with a paintbrush. Sometimes, it’s best to just sit back, enjoy the ride, and embrace the chaos. And, if you have kids, be sure to give them a big hug next time you see them.

As a student of philosophy, particularly influenced by the works of Martin Heidegger, Malick’s cinema was always destined to be different.

The artist is the origin of the work. The work is the origin of the artist. Neither is without the other.1

These are films whose screenplays are more like rough sketches than blueprints; foundations built with matchsticks, not concrete. Actors are more like vessels than performers. Suspended on the starved opposite end of the chewed up scenery left by the Leonardo DiCaprio’s of world. Narratives are nebulous at best, and the conventional cogs that usually drive story - action, conflict, inciting incidents, build ups, climaxes - melt away like the clocks in a Salvador Dali painting.

What this all amounts to is that, for a lot of people, Malick’s movies are that most accursed, unforgivable thing that’s anathema to the 21st century movie watcher. They’re boring. Their plotless natures, coupled with a complete lack of obviousness and theatrical bravado, make them seem aimless, listless, perpetually tempting your attention span to break.

But for some other people…

Hearing the music

There’s a brilliant quote attributed to (but not actually confirmed to come from) Friedrich Nietzsche, and that Megan Fox has a tattoo of, which is quite fitting here.

Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

There are those cinephiles among us, who - for whatever, unanswerable reason - dance to the tune of Malick’s music. If you hear it, and you feel it, you know that it’s the kind that has transformed the way stories are told on screen. It’s a whole new language, unlike anything else you’ve ever seen or heard, and it has the power to open your mind’s eye to a whole new world of meaning.

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The heavy use of deeply-felt voice over, at times so internalised it comes out as a single whispered word. The never-still camera and its sense of freedom - turning away from our protagonist to focus on the way the sunlight is piercing through a leaf. The painterly cinematography and composition. All of these have become Malickian trademarks, along with his infamous post-production editing process that can last years, his never yelling “Cut!” on set so that the film just rolls on and the editors have millions of feet to sift through.

Viewed collectively, this entire process and end result, makes Malick perhaps the purest artist - in the philosophical sense of purity - in cinema.

It’s not a coincidence that those who work with him readily speak of his ‘genius’, ‘sensitivity’, ‘curiosity’ and sense of ‘wonder’. He is often likened to an orchestral composer or a painter, and in the editing room he refers to film footage like a flowing river.2 I am now convinced that, while all of his peers and colleagues direct, Terrence Malick simply films. And there is great beauty and truth to be discovered in a piece of art that is infused with that much freedom and devotion to its natural power.

The relationship between a moving image and sound is redefined in his films, and in the process, like a caterpillar transformed into a butterfly, liberated. Unaffected and unencumbered by star performances, Hollywoodised politics, clever plot twists, thrilling action that fades from memory just as quickly as it enters, and unrealistic dialogue from unrealistic characters who find themselves in unrealistic circumstances.

Terrence Malick distills the artform down to an elemental level, where film is at its most vulnerable, confounding, and beautiful. It contains multitudes, all within itself.

But is the work ever accessible in itself? For this to happen, it would be necessary to remove the work out of all relations to what is other than it itself, in order to let it rest upon itself alone for itself. But in this direction aims already the ownmost intention of the artist. The work is to be released by him into its pure standing-within-itself.3

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A moment from The New World

My personal journey of acquiring the taste for this one-of-a-kind filmmaker and hearing his music, started with The Thin Red Line (1998). I hope to one day write about what that movie means to me because not only do I consider it the greatest war film ever made, but one of the greatest films ever made, period.

To conclude my piece, however, I turn to a fleeting moment in The New World (2005) - another breathtaking masterpiece that in hindsight marks a clear fork in the road in the filmmaker’s evolution.

Released seven years after The Thin Red Line and six years before The Tree of Life (2011), The New World sees the ink of Malick’s signature setting in. Following a fixed story and narrative like his previous three films but beginning to experiment more with voice overs, camera work and stream-of-consciousness editing that would go on to define much of his films that followed thereafter, especially the so-called “Weightless Trilogy” - To The Wonder (2012), Knight of Cups (2015) and Song to Song (2017).

In The New World, there is a moment that defines Malick’s modus operandi as well as any other from his filmography.

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During John Smith’s Presidency of Jamestown, after he had come back from his time with the Powhatans and Pocahontas, a daddy long legs spider crawls along a branch. The branch is gorgeously spotted and exotic, and the spider’s movement is smooth, balletic, indiscernible.

It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, quite literally – I don’t think it lasts for even one full second. It also appears completely out of the blue; a seemingly random shot that may as well have come out of some nature documentary and accidentally got cut-and-pasted into the film by some poor, sleep deprived editor.

Amidst the chaos unfolding in the story – John Smith (Colin Farrell) torn between his longing for Pocahontas (Q'orianka Kilcher) and his duty as a leader (the perennial battle of heart vs. mind), while his men starve, desperately dig for gold, suffer from disease and generally lose whatever morsels of hope they’re still clinging onto by the minute. With the hope, go the minds – as the ever-searching camera finds Savage (John Savage), ranting fragments of nonsense that may or may not be alluding to the death of civilization.

The degradation of mankind unfolds thusly. Between the madman’s ravings and Smith’s heartsick introspection, we see the flash of a shot of our spider. Just being a spider. Plot-wise, it has no business being in the film. It doesn’t further the narrative by a single iota. What’s it doing there? What kind of strange, accidental, indiscernible, ambiguous, beautiful moment is this?

The super-close up shot of this spider doesn’t even linger as you’d conventionally expect a shot like that to. Gorgeous shots of nature and all of its critters and creatures tend to at least serve the purpose of providing a couple of beats of pause. To take a break, reflect, soak in the beautiful environment the characters of our story are in and – sure – be a bit of a navel-gazing exercise from the director. There’s none of that here. Amidst the external chaos of the Jamestown conditions and its residents, and the internal turmoil swirling within John Smith, a spider – for the briefest of moments – just is.

By the time the receptors in your brain even have time to light up with signals of recognition (“Oh, what? A spider? Crawling on- what is that a-”) it’s gone, never to be seen on screen again.

We are left to wonder, if we are even lucky enough to not have blinked and missed it.

These kinds of moments are woven into the experience of the film throughout. The spider is but one of many indiscernible, beautiful, natural, seemingly random, slightly puzzling, moments in The New World. Plants, trees, grass, birds, ripples in the river, loving eyes, cruel eyes, sad eyes, intense eyes, known gestures of kindness, unknown gestures of tradition and ritual, children, babies, the sky – life fragments of context disconnected from convention but very much in harmony with the whole unconventional experience that colors the entirety of Terrence Malick’s new world.

A distinct language all its own.

A music I’m grateful to be able to hear and dance to.

Quentin Tarantino turned 60 yesterday. Jesus, that makes me feel old. From the handful of directors that had a permanent impact on my movie-watching life, Tarantino is among the most important. I’ll never forget the day I saw Pulp Fiction (1994) for the first time.

It was 1996 or 1997 and I was way too young to be watching a film featuring heroin overdose, rape, blown-out brain bits and over 260 mentions of the word fuck. But watch it I did, and my impression of movies changed forever.

Before that day, I never understood their boundless power. I never knew stories could be told this way. I never knew movies could be this fucking cool. When the end credits of Pulp Fiction rolled, for the first time ever in my life, I rewound the VHS tape and immediately watched the whole thing again.

That was the day Quentin Tarantino became Maestro of Cool for me. The roots of my obsessive cinephilia dug in deeper and coiled themselves into an inextricable knot. For many, many years after that hallowed day, Pulp Fiction was my unblinking reply to the perennial “what’s your favorite movie?” question, and a massive black-and-white poster of Jules and Vincent pointing their guns went with me wherever I moved. Watching Reservoir Dogs (1992) a year later (in fitting, non-linear, Tarantino-esque style), and then Jackie Brown (1997), only furthered my allegiance to the Maestro.

What hooked me was his endlessly quotable dialogue that’s somehow hyper-realistic but also only possible in movies; his endlessly listenable soundtracks featuring the most obscure songs with the catchiest, most familiar sounds; and his larger-than-life characters that became icons before my very eyes thanks to the most seamless union of performance and screenplay I had ever seen.

Samuel L. Jackson as Jules Winfield, Uma Thurman as Mrs. Mia Wallace, John Travolta as Vincent Vega, Michael Madsen as Mr. Blonde, Steve Buscemi as Mr. Pink, Pam Grier as Jackie Brown, Robert Forster as Max Cherry, Robert De Niro as Louis Gara. Those are some of the biggest MVPs, but I’m not exaggerating when I say that Tarantino’s collective cast from these three films feature the greatest acting ensemble of the 90s. And most definitely the coolest.     

In the 2000s, my taste in movies evolved, acquiring a deeper, more serious disposition. Being cool was no longer enough, it wasn’t as important. While I got more and more interested in cinema as a philosophical avenue and psychological artform from elder masters (Tarkovsky, Kurosawa, Kieslowski, Malick, etc.), Tarantino unleashed his inner movie geek to the fullest, unapologetically nerding out on pastiche martial arts (Kill Bill Vol. 1 in 2003 and Vol. 2 in 2004), exploitation (Death Proof in 2007), and WWII (Inglourious Basterds in 2009).

In some weird way, as I was pulled towards arthouse, and Tarantino embraced grindhouse, it felt like I was growing up and he was doing a Benjamin Button and becoming more of a kid. Coincidentally, in that same decade, Jackie Brown dethroned Pulp Fiction as my favorite Tarantino film, in what felt like a most natural selection.

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I still ranked him among my favorite directors, and of course every new Tarantino film was more than just a film, it was an unmissable cultural event. But as much as I loved the Kill Bill films, as much as I defended Death Proof to the critics around me, and no matter how entertained I was by Inglourious Basterds and QT’s latest discovery in Christoph Waltz, something was noticeably different.

I didn’t have the urge to rewind the tape.

Quentin was still the Maestro of Cool, undoubtedly, but my loyalties had clearly shifted.

The final line of Basterds hit me like a dump truck, when Brad Pitt’s Lt. Aldo Raine kneels down to reflect on his latest handiwork and says straight to the camera that very cheeky, very meta, “this just might be my masterpiece” line. My gut told me what I just watched was most definitely not a Tarantino masterpiece. I knew it was one of the most entertaining films I’d see that year, it has scenes that need to be on a Tarantino career-highlight reel (the tavern!) and it’s got Hans Lands, one of Tarantino’s greatest creations, but deep in my bones I knew that Basterds didn’t hold a candle to his three 90s masterpieces or even Kill Bill.

My disenchantment with Tarantino continued and hit rock bottom by the mid 2010s, even though I rate Django Unchained (2012) quite highly. As his second “history revenge” film to come out after Basterds, Django’s more compelling and focused story - with a side of deliciously evil Leonardo DiCaprio - is pound-for-pound better. But it’s the movie that came after that truly shook my belief in QT.

The Hateful Eight (2015) featured a reunion of some of Tarantino’s greatest actors – Jackson, Roth, Madsen etc. – and the Daisy Domergue character (played by Jennifer Jason Leigh) reminded me of what a brilliant example of genuine feminism Tarantino is, with his natural knack for writing some of the most memorable and engrossing female characters in the history of mainstream cinema.

This was a purer Western than Django, shot in eye-watering 70mm, with original Morricone music, and focused on a cast of deplorables stuck in a house armed with Quentin Tarantino dialogue. It’s every fan’s wet dream. And yet, somehow – I’m still not sure how this is even possible – I think it’s Tarantino’s worst film.

I will most definitely be watching it again to make sure I haven’t completely lost the plot, but The Hateful Eight was the first time I felt physical struggle instead of total (or near-total) immersion while watching a Tarantino film.

My confidence that I was still watching a movie by the Maestro of Cool was shaken to the core.

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In 2017, at this lowest of ebbs in my relationship with Tarantino’s movies, his 9^th film was announced. It was to be a love letter to Hollywood, with the trifecta of superstars in Pitt, DiCaprio, and Margot Robbie. I began to anticipate the film with the fervor of a rabid dog, but I felt something I never felt before. I was skeptical. I was worried about whether I would like a new Tarantino film. It would be a compliment to Basterds and Django as his third “revenge history” film, which didn’t exactly fill me with confidence since Basterds was the origin of the first big crack.

So, when Once Upon a Time in Hollywood premiered in 2019, I walking into the cinema fearing the worst.

About three hours later I walked out feeling recharged. My gut was telling me that I just saw one of Quentin Tarantino’s greatest films. Everything I love about his style of cinema – the dialogue, the characters, the way his actors perform, the music, the story construction, the magic of cool – got resuscitated by some inexplicable defibrillator, held by Pitt and DiCaprio who deliver career-best work.

Extra add-ons come in the form of perfectly constructed set pieces that transport you back to 1960s Los Angeles and an undercurrent of extra love poured into the world of the film, propelled by the fact that it’s a personal ode to a time in Hollywood that was foundational for Tarantino as a person and as a filmmaker.

When I walked out of the cinema, the first thought that came to my mind was: I want to see that again. For the first time, in a long, long time, I wanted to rewind the tape. A big love that was ignited over 20 years ago, and laid dormant for a patch in the middle, suddenly came rushing back like blood to the head.

The Maestro was back.

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Now, we’re well into the 2020s and Tarantino has stuck to the promise he made decades ago. He will be directing only one more movie before retiring from feature filmmaking, and his 10th film - simply titled The Movie Critic - has been announced as a possible critique of modern Hollywood, loosely based on Tarantino’s (and everyone else’s, really) favorite film critic, Pauline Kael.

Hollywood would’ve been a good swan song for Tarantino, but this upcoming one sounds like it could be even more apt. Although my taste in movies shifted away from Tarantino's directorial style in the 2000s, today I admire him under a whole new light.

The movie landscape has changed dramatically in the last decade, becoming more and more tied to political and gender identity concerns. Too many filmmakers are more concerned with avoiding offense than creating authentic art, and too many critics are quick to praise mediocrity if it ticks a lot of diversity boxes.

It’s not a landscape for someone like Quentin Tarantino, a man with an inflated ego who might have indulged from time to time, but someone who always stayed true to himself and his vision, and who to this day gives a grand total of zero fucks if someone takes offense to his ways.

It feels bittersweet to anticipate Tarantino’s next film. On the one hand, I’m not skeptical anymore because Once Upon a Time in Hollywood made me realise that the Maestro never even left. On the other, I’ll be anticipating a new Tarantino film for the very last time.

Happy Birthday, Quentin Tarantino. Thank you for everything.

I will forever be in your debt.