In One Battle After Another, director Paul Thomas Anderson presents two extreme shades of ideological possession. With the revolutionary group known as the French 75, we see individuals who have completely dedicated every facet of their personalities to extreme liberal ideals. Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), who is slowly realising that she and her husband Pat Calhoun/Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) are growing apart (a fairly predictable outcome in any relationship), chooses to express it by using caricaturish neo-liberal jargon instead of straightforward language. “This is a new consciousness,” she says to her husband, and then adds, “I reject your lack of originality,” before bursting out of their house, leaving Pat and her daughter. Even as she throws blame at him for the degradation of their relationship, she expresses it with vacuous terms that merely sound ‘radical’. On the other end of the spectrum, we see the white supremacist group known as the Christmas Adventurers Club. Col Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn) subdues his feelings and is prepared to go to violent extremes, just so he can prove his loyalty and get into this exclusive club. Despite the heavy commentary, One Battle After Another still maintains a healthy dose of levity through absurdist humour. Perhaps, the humour itself isn’t absurdist by nature. You are merely shown how ridiculous such ideological possessions are, and you cannot help but chuckle. And yet, you know that the kind of people you see in the film, the kind of absurd choices they make, the bizarre events that unfold, are not entirely further from reality. Such resonance is the power of truth. Such resonance is the success of films like One of Battle After Another. They present entirely different facets of truths we inherently know, and yet, haven’t seen demonstrated in such a way.

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti

It is not just ideological extremes that the film deals with. One Battle After Another also portrays those floaters in the middle who inadvertently attach themselves to a side, just so they can stop feeling lost and confused, and paradoxically, lose themselves further. Leonardo DiCarpio’s Pat Calhoun/Bob Ferguson, the explosives expert of French 75, is one such character. It is almost immediately apparent that he is not as captivated by his revolutionary group's violent disruptions as much as he is excited by his girlfriend and fellow French 75 member, Perfidia. “You are not suited for my daughter, you are not like her, you are confused,” says Perfidia's mother. The fact that he is confused and is motivated by love, more than anything, makes Pat all the more endearing. In a film full of characters with zealous passion for a cause or an ideology, playing a character like Pat is tricky. You could either make him look unbearably naive, clueless, or a dimwitted simpleton. DiCaprio makes Pat somehow close to the above-mentioned descriptions and yet so far away from them. Pat might be confused, but he has a conscience. He is paranoid, and yet there is no complex overthinking behind his actions. He is frustrated at his own state, but he never blames anybody or anything, maybe not even himself. Moreover, all of those nuances are packed with humour. One of the most entertaining stretches of the film is when, at a critical moment, Pat tries to reconnect with French 75 over the phone and has to deal with a frustratingly pedantic member who withholds crucial information because Pat cannot remember a decades-old password. Apart from being riotous fun, this particular scene is a brilliant demonstration of the absurdity of ideological possession. Having said all of that, Pat is still the film’s second-best performance, as Sean Penn’s Col Steven J Lockjaw stands tall as the character that stays with you the longest.

Everything, from his stilted walk to his stiff demeanour, and how his eyes dart about semi-focused, and how he spits out sentences that evince a broken thought pattern, Penn completely loses any trace of himself in a character that is pathetic, dangerous, evil, pitiful, irredeemable, sympathetic, and naive, all at the same time. After doing the most heinous crime, and nearly losing his life in the process, Lockjaw is seen welling up while receiving the recognition he always wanted from his white supremacist friends, the sign of acceptance: a small office room with a city view in their building. Seeing him swell up with pride and joy like a little kid, you cannot help but feel a painful jab of pity for the character. In a film with several characters to represent a dozen shades of ideological possession, Chase Infiniti’s Charlene Calhoun (Pat and Perfidia’s daughter) stands apart. She is young enough to still hold her true self, but is nevertheless tormented as a by-product of the two extremes of ideological possession. Charlene is the grand metaphor of American politics and the world at large, which is caught in the never-ending tug-of-war between the Left and the Right. Having gone through a torrential sequence of violent events and having been exposed to several wild secrets about her own identity, Charlene is shaken enough that she even briefly points the gun at a loved one and demands, "Who are you?" before running into their arms.

As Charlene heads to a public protest towards the end of the film, we are not sure if the moment that ignited her revolutionary spirit (a letter from her estranged mother) is orchestrated by Pat himself or if it is authentic. Is the spirit of revolution born of free will? Or is it just another form of control? Perhaps it doesn’t really matter. Pat might just be doing it all, whether following Perfidia or possibly lying to Charlene, out of love and nothing else. But is it really a bad thing to be possessed by love instead of ideology? The answer to that question becomes irrelevant if you observe Charlene’s actions. By still choosing to stand and fight for her ideals, even after being exposed to the truth about her identity and having the ideal image of her mother being shattered, Charlene becomes a revolutionary that her ideologically possessed mother could never become. Perhaps, as Charlene demonstrates, the biggest act of revolution is to face the uncomfortable truths about oneself and still stand unwavering in one's ideals. Perhaps, the revolution will not be televised, because it is less about external demonstrations and more about internal reflection after all.