ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER – Review by MaryAnn Johanson
One Battle After Another is, alas, an artifact of the precise moment at which a once grand culture — I’m talking about the United States of America, for all its many, many deep and profound and inhumane faults — finally, perhaps irrevocably, crumbled. This movie, full of shrieking rage, bleak humor, and bitter irony about the current state of the self-proclaimed greatest nation on Earth, was greenlit two years ago, as the nation was in that Biden-powered post-first-Trump-administration minute when Wile E. Coyote has run off the cliff but is still hovering in the air, hoping beyond hope for rescue. And now the finished Battle is released at the very instant when collapse awareness is dawning and the Coyote produces a sign reading “Help!,” and plunges to his demise.
This is not a reflection on One Battle After Another, which is a big glorious hunk of a film: brash, chaotic, despairing about the state of the nation but trying to find a way to survive it. It is a reflection on how fast things are falling apart. It’s shocking to see that such a film as this, a studio endeavor with a big budget and blockbuster vibes over its anarchic indie heart, got produced at all, even a few years ago. It’s impossible to imagine that we will see its like again anytime soon. The furious hope it represents hasn’t been extinguished at large, but actually expressing it like this may damn well be impossible soon. (I hope I’m wrong about this, but I fear I’m not.) (Continue reading…)
