Paul Thomas Anderson (Los Angeles, 1970) is back. With all that implies. One Battle After Another seems to be the production destined to make him the man of the season. Based on Thomas Pynchon's book Vineland, the film starring Leonardo DiCaprio emerges from the screen as the most frenetic of his works and at the same time the most political; the funniest and the cruelest; the most orthodox and the most unclassifiable. It tells the story of an old revolutionary terrorist from the 60s (DiCaprio) who in the 80s lives retired with his daughter (newcomer Chase Infiniti) until things start to go wrong and the past returns in the form of a violent and paranoid policeman (Sean Penn). Suddenly, old problems are new and the fascisms of the past are those of today. Distant, hesitant, with the camera off, the director addresses a group of media from the other side of the zoom very aware that it is not the time for bombastic statements. It's the movie of the year.
Let's see if I say it right. The movie adapts a book published in the 90s that recreates events from the 80s about a couple of revolutionary movements from the 60s. But in the end, it ends up talking about immigration as a consequence, perhaps, of all the crises we are experiencing right now...
Correct.
Would you say that we are living in a time loop? It's as if nothing has changed and the past is exactly identical to the present.
Yes, that's right. Unfortunately, that's exactly how it seems. There's a line in the movie that summarizes the situation quite well. One of the characters, named Perfidia, after a 16-year time lapse, says: "After all this time, the world has changed very little." The truth is that fiction thrives on making us believe that time changes everything, that it alters everything, but that's not the case. It's not realistic to think that time changes how humans behave. If we are realistic, we have to admit that from the 60s to now, the world has changed very little. Desires and concerns remain the same. Moreover, we all like to think that things improve, that the world is getting better, that the arrow of history is moving forward... But it's not the case, changes are extremely small. Despite our hunger for change and impatience, we are quite selfish. The summary would be: more of the same, just a different day.
However, without giving away too much, the movie has a somewhat, let's say, hopeful resolution. Do you have hope for the future of your country, the United States?
I'm glad someone noticed that there is a message of hope in the movie. I confess that my fear is that people might think that "Another Battle After Another" is once again a story about how tough things are. The story being told, despite everything, presents hope. I'll go further, I'm a person who has hope for the simple reason that I have children. It's hope that gets you out of bed every morning. It's hope that makes you emotional when you see your kids. Having hope, no matter how things are going, is not an option, it's an obligation, an act of responsibility towards the present and the future of your children. I imagine I'm the fool who bangs his head against the wall every morning thinking that everything will get better.
The two terrorist organizations in the movie, one extreme left-wing and the other extreme right-wing supremacist, do they have any correlation with reality? What organizations are they based on?
One of them is clearly inspired by the organizations of the sixties. I think of the Weather Underground or the Black Panthers. They were groups that emerged as quickly as they dispersed and drifted away. Either they were allowed to move on with the rest of their lives, or they died, or ended up in jail. The other group, The Christmas Adventurers, emerged while I was researching for another of my movies, "The Master." I came across a group calling themselves Mankind United with a vaguely anti-Semitic manifesto. In short, they were guys who preached a utopia that demanded that others do for humanity what they basically were not willing to do for others. It's a good model that represents all those who do not practice what they preach. And nowadays, we have many examples of that.
The movie evokes a rare, seemingly contradictory feeling. It is one of the most agile and entertaining of your entire career, yet it deals with the urgent issue of immigration, which fuels all reactionary discourses both in your country and around the world. Is it morally permissible to enjoy something so serious?
The idea was to make the audience feel like they were not in a political movie, or at least not in the traditional sense. The entry into the narrative cannot be that. And so, the whole effort was to hypnotize the audience and clearly say, "This is not a political movie." The right way to approach "Another Battle After Another" is as an action film, or as a father's struggle to find his daughter. From this perspective, it's even a family movie. The underlying themes are in the background, almost like a backdrop. The only way to approach any argument, no matter how political it may be intended, is through humor, emotion, and the humanity of the characters. But political cinema is a genre in itself... Yes. Sometimes I watch movies and I don't know what to think. I'll give an example, and I don't want it to be misunderstood. I don't want to speak ill of a movie like "Reds," a political movie, simply because I love it. And I'll say it's one of my all-time favorites. But all the part that explains the Russian Revolution and the political situation back then only makes the viewer disconnect. I disconnect. But then there's the love story between Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton and the scene where they meet at the train station. All of that is wonderful. It's impossible not to fall in love with that story because you get involved in a very intimate way, and it's simply a borderless tale that boils in the memory of any viewer worldwide. The other part, the political aspect, makes sense from there, not the other way around. And that's exactly what I tried to do. Can you enjoy a serious plot? That was the question. Of course, you can, that's the essence of cinema.
Either way, your movie is a period film that evokes the present, as we mentioned. To what extent is it necessary to go back to the past to fix what's wrong in the present? Or in other words, do the 60s, the decade of hope, have something to teach us today?
Humans are so selfish that they always believe they are experiencing something no one has ever experienced before. That's not true. Just something as simple as opening a history book. Many times when I see what's happening, the reaction is the same: are we really so unoriginal? The feeling is like watching a movie where you know exactly how it ends. Benicio del Toro's character has a good line in the movie about this. DiCaprio tells him, "I'm sorry for bringing all this to your doorstep" when he involves him in all his problems. Benicio looks at him and replies, "Dude, we've been sowing the seeds of what's happening to us now for hundreds of years. You didn't do anything wrong. Don't be damn selfish." I think that sums up where we've gotten ourselves into.
Going back to the action movie aspect you mentioned earlier. Jonny Greenwood's (Radiohead) music is exactly the opposite of what we are used to in the genre...
Exactly. Traditionally, this genre requires highly elaborate music. The music is the dialogue of a scene without dialogue. Ours, on the other hand, is quite simple and repetitive. And that contributes to a general tension. I just told Jonny that I thought we needed something percussive, very rhythmic. The result, after working on it a lot and listening to many tests over and over on the set itself, makes the audience quite nervous and anxious. And that is especially important in the central sequence that lasts almost 30 minutes. It had to be repetitive but not irritating.
Lastly, it's curious that in a cast full of stars and with a ubiquitous Leonardo DiCaprio, one of the ones who shines the most is the newcomer Chase Infiniti.
It's almost a miracle, in fact. The first time we thought about making this movie was seven or eight years ago. But back then, we couldn't find anyone. Suddenly, we picked up the project again, the stars aligned, and a perfect girl from Indianapolis emerged. Without getting too sentimental, I feel like the movie has been waiting all this time for her to appear.