Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another

Let me say something really dumb but true: One Battle After Another is a lot of movie. It was shot in VistaVision (a film stock that was, most recently, used for The Brutalist) and is almost three hours long. And yet, that time goes by so quickly, because PTA has made an action film about revolutionary politics—or rather, politics that should be the norm, the ones we have to fight for—that’s exciting, beautiful, funny, unapologetic, and extremely poignant. I wrote about it at length for Reverse Shot. I highly advise you to wait until after you’ve seen the film to read it—maybe use your browser’s “bookmark” function. (Hey, remember that? A relic of the “actually useful” internet.)

The Criterion Channel has a little Robert Altman series to celebrate the writer/director’s 100th birthday. I wrote about Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean for the Criterion Current. However, I did a ton of research that didn’t end up in the final piece, so enjoy it:

After a string of critical and commercial failures—five to be exact, which gives one a sense of the largesse of New Hollywood and the sensation that was Nashville—Robert Altman turned to theater. This was a homecoming of sorts: in addition to industrial documentaries, Altman had first cut his teeth by directing plays at the Kansas City JCC. Rather than seizing upon an up-and-coming talent or established dramaturge in New York, Altman chose to work with Ed Graczyk, a playwright whose work had only been staged at regional theaters.

Altman took the play to Broadway, went through his characteristically wild rehearsal process (he called the play “a ballet, a musical”), inserted flashback scenes that weren’t in the original, and then, after it got middling reviews, still adapted it to film. I only wish I could be that confident (and secure funding).

In an interview with New York Magazine, Altman explained his distaste for James Dean, which also points to part of the reason why he was drawn to the play: “I never liked Dean that much—I hated Rebel Without a Cause and I didn’t like Giant…. [I wanted] to undo this God thing, to find out the truth. I don’t like the idea of superstars—they’re an excuse for the masses not to think about their own problems.”

Read the rest.