In this episode of the Superstructure podcast, Scott Ferguson is joined by independent film scholar Jonathan Haynes to discuss Paul Thomas Anderson’s acclaimed new film, One Battle After Another. The conversation centers on the film’s contribution to popular political cinema under the authoritarian violence of the second Trump administration. Scott and Jonathan affirm One Battle’s unapologetically leftist perspective as a breath of fresh air within a current political climate of despair–a feeling emblematized by films such as Ari Aster’s Eddington. Specifically, the episode examines how One Battle, which draws loose inspiration from Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, deliberately removes specific historical markers to place the story in an ambiguous present of ongoing revolution and counter-revolution. The hosts evaluate One Battle’s controversial representation of leftist violence, highlighting the film’s focus on countervailing infrastructures in addition to punctuated actions. They also speculate about the meaning of the film’s rich aesthetic choices, including the mobile telephoto lenses that transform a conventional car chase into a dizzying allegory of an American culture unclear about its driving motivations and aims. Finally, Scott and Jonathan consider the complex, racialized eroticism between the revolutionary mother and the white-supremacist commander (played by Teyana Taylor and Sean Penn), which gives rise to the central character, Willa (Chase Infinity). Willa, they argue, embodies the entangled, embattled, and yet still hopeful left politics that the film ultimately celebrates.
Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening to Anyone but Me” EP by flirting.
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