One Battle After Another (2025) - (Just) A Very Good PTA Movie

One Battle After Another (2025)

Finally back on the blog and I’m doing it with a bang, finally managing to find the time to review this PTA film, seen several months ago by now! People online, right after its release, wouldn’t talk about anything else and kept praising this title, calling it Paul’s “Citizen Kane”, which pissed me off because everyone knows that the real crown jewel of the director is “Phantom Thread”. But whatever, people always have to exaggerate. Curious, I go to Melzo and watch it in 70 mm. I was curious, yes, but only up to a point.

Anderson is notoriously a total genius as well as one of the best American directors of all time, so why be so surprised. Another great film was the bare minimum I expected. Well then, what to say after seeing it: I was happy, very, very, a lot, quite a bit, but with some clarifications and some small doubts that are anything but negligible. It really is a great film. Well packaged and well presented to the audience. However, among the author’s titles, it felt like one of the most “less inspired”, or maybe not even that, not less inspired, the least committed, but maybe not even that; it felt like the Paul Thomas Anderson film that is least Paul Thomas Anderson. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, actually, but being a lover of this bastard of a filmmaker since his very first film and having grown up with his filmography, his direction and his writing, I was absolutely not ready for a film of this kind. My expectations definitely betrayed me.

Despite this, I’m still fully aware that this is truly the most “homework” film the director has made, executed perfectly also to attract and involve a slice of the audience that doesn’t know the great PTA. And I’m convinced he succeeded.

In fact, it doesn’t have, in and of itself, any major flaws. Actually, I feel safe saying that maybe it has none. To me, though, it didn’t arrive strong enough. Why? Because I come from a streak of masterpieces by this man such that this one felt a bit less. Simply that.

If I had discovered that the director was just some random person, I probably would have joined the line of people online and here on the blog screaming masterpiece, but PTA raised me and spoiled me too much for this to happen with this film. And I’m really sorry about that. The film itself is quite cool, with monstrous direction and a technical setup that’s out of the ordinary: seeing it in Melzo definitely adds an extra effect, especially considering the power of VistaVision on a screen of that size. DiCaprio is great stuff, but he wasn’t among the performers who struck me the most. Sean Penn is phenomenal and the very young Chase Infiniti was also really excellent. I didn’t quite understand the depth of Tayana Taylor’s character instead: she was good, sure, but I would have liked to see her much more present in the film. Not so much because she’s in it for little time, but because compared to the overall duration of the film her character has a misleading evolution. It leads you to think of a possible return, a return that instead absolutely does not happen. That disappointed me and I consider it a petal of a flaw that was truly avoidable.

Other characters are completely abandoned along the way, others still are not explored at all or barely brushed against. Not at all in line with Paul Thomas’s standards

Beautiful cinematography that gives its best in the final portion outside of reality; that roller coaster, by name and by fact, is one of the most intense sequences ever seen.

Hats off as well to Jonny Greenwood’s music which works as the perfect glue between one scene and the next.

I would have liked to see more of the group of racist redneck rich guys, both because it was a very fascinating and Lynchian subplot and because every scene with them was too extra and too much fun. It really gave the film that sense of rotten universality that I felt was scarcely present and that is such a big part of the American director’s filmography.

A somewhat rushed ending but still very much in line with what is being told (with the exception of the “Christopher Nolan-style exposition moment” which really made me want to puke). I don’t know, by the time I reach the end of this review I don’t even know myself whether I’m convinced of my thoughts or not. I liked this film a lot, really, it sounds like I thought it was complete shit, but in reality I seriously appreciated it. The only real criticism I feel like making, for which the film didn’t fully convince me, is that I never thought, not even for a second, about the very powerful message it carried with it. Not all films are made to leave something behind or to communicate an idea, but here what I grasp is only that revolution is not made in one day and on this I absolutely agree, but what more do you want to tell me? 

And I’m not talking about a political, socioeconomic, racial or moral message, but really about something that goes beyond and that investigates first and foremost man, secondly his relationship with what surrounds him and thirdly the author himself of this great film. Because as much as it’s discussed, the only true great flaw of this film in my opinion is the complete lack of its author. Paul Thomas Anderson, you, my great love, my great hero, my great source of inspiration, what do you want to tell me of YOURS?