Paul Thomas Anderson’s cinema is fascinating since it is beautiful. Delicate, delicious, so sweet. We know it, but they pick us up as a blue every time. Believe that we like it. His last and tenth feature film, One battle after anotherIn cinemas, on September 24, it is not an exception to the rule. Although different, more nervous, more thriller, the jeans that run well, are not very sharp in the undulating roads of California with, in the background, a lovely lightness.
Several clues made us fear the worst before its launch. A colossal budget already. Between $ 130 and $ 175 million according to IMDB, the most expensive and commercial film of the filmmaker of Licorice pizza, There will be blood, ghost thread, pitillo-am-amor EITHER Magnoliamore accustomed to rotating with an egg nest between $ 20 and 40 million. There is no selection in Cannes, nor in Venice Mostra, or in other places; The rumor that in turn rumors the delays, the problems of the agenda or the reluctance of its distributor, Warner Bros., to place it at the festival and to submit, if there is, it is angry in the middle.
But Steven Spielberg reassured everyone in early September, ecstatic after a preview of the movie in Los Angeles: “Everything is really incredible. It is a mixture of things that are strange and very relevant.” Elegant. Then a rain of praise was linked in the US media.
Revolutionaries vs. supremacists
Paul Thomas Anderson, therefore, is not a man who disappoints. His western to Huergas de la Comedia and the Thriller, very freely adapted from the novel Vineland By Thomas Pynchon: the filmmaker had already put another of his books, with Inherent vice In 2014, it tells the story of Bob, a former revolutionary of the left far drowned in alcohol and drugs (Leonardo DiCaprio, which since then we have found Flower moon murderers By Martin Scorsese in 2023, but we have already seen too much in this registry). The lost father goes in search of his daughter (Chase Infiniti), kidnapped by his old enemy, Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn, impressive).
In a long prologue, we learn that, younger, Bob led the rebellion with his perfidy partner (Teyana Taylor) for the group “French75”, both playing the world of the world, defenders of the fair causes and the oppressed, furious peoples against the capital of the king and the dominant state. They loved them madly, they stirred their weapons (the sequence where the perfidy is pregnant with the neck with a machine gun in the hand is genius), he handled explosives, saved his skin. He gave birth to a girl.
They also crossed in their way to this famous colonel, a bloody white supremacist caught in a t -shirt too tight, driving an administrative retention center on the Mexican border. Ready to do anything to do a place in the paradise of the old white conservatives.
Then, one day, perfidy preferred his freedom and militancy, leaving husband and girl without looking back. The lines in his jealousy towards his son or his fear of seeing Bob become an abusive father once again feel very good. This makes it less heroic, but more nuanced, more unique. Above all, Paul Thomas Anderson gives us the woman’s cliché of the mother capable of everything, and with a hung smile.
Horrible pervert
Paul Thomas Anderson does not deliver a script movie here (no matter if we have already seen it a thousand times), but an exercise of style. It is an image or paint manufacturer. Each of its scenes is ultra work, controlled, cut in several plans. Or magnified by a detail: expressions here, a fireworks fire there. He draws the light, plays with her, creates color and shadows, musicality.
The filmmaker also manufactures characters that do not take care of themselves. It is true that Colonel Lockjaw is a horrible pervert. Paul Thomas Anderson happily does not care, but he also takes it seriously. And he adds something else in his childish gaze, his desire, his unsuspected naivety, even if it is only an ounce of humanity. It is precisely what loses it. In Uncle Sam’s country, we always eat bigger than us.
But there is no cynicism in your cinema, only systems of domination that are aiming and shaking. Paul Thomas Anderson, 55, remember, therefore, films today, his racial and generational fractures, his radical activism and his white men fed up with power and purification.
But do not forget the rhythm or lightness. This peculiar tone reminiscent of the Coen brothers, these fun replicas, these overflowing gags, these piano melodies in a setback take the thriller to another place. Towards the great art and the great show.
Source: BFM TV
