A Breath of Fresh Air Amidst a Dystopian Reality

 A few weeks ago, I attended one of the first screenings of Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film, One Battle After Another, and I came away deeply impressed. The reaction of the rest of the audience, journalists and members of the American film industry, was equally enthusiastic. The film, featuring a stellar cast that includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, and a promising newcomer, Chase Infiniti, was unanimously praised. I didn’t hear a single negative comment from my fellow critics, quite the opposite.

Blending drama and comedy, the film feels remarkably relevant, even though Anderson began writing the script two decades ago. It tackles themes such as the misdirected fury of radical leftist movements of the 1970s, the absurdity of American far-right secret societies (which, as ludicrous as they seem, do exist), and the chilling behavior of the current government, with its proto-Nazi ICE troops and alligator-surrounded detention camps, alongside the underground networks protecting persecuted Latinos and undocumented immigrants. In other words: entirely contemporary.

After the screening, there was a brief discussion with the director and main cast, followed by a small dinner in the square beside the Steven J. Ross Theater, right in the heart of the Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, next to the backlot where scenes from Blade Runner, and Mel Brooks’s To Be or Not to Be were filmed. There, artists mingled freely with guests, blurring the lines between Hollywood’s creative world and its observers.

Paul Thomas Anderson is one of those rare filmmakers who dismantles the usual criticism aimed at Hollywood by much of the foreign intelligentsia, the idea that the American industry corrupts global cinema. Anderson reminds me of independent directors from all over the world, including Brazil. Though he works within the studio system, his films defy Hollywood formulas. He began as a true independent and has managed to preserve that spirit in both his scripts and direction.

Born in 1970, Anderson stands among the most significant filmmakers of his generation, alongside Wes Anderson, Spike Lee, and Quentin Tarantino, auteur directors whose work is unmistakably personal. Over his career, he has won multiple awards, including the BAFTA, and earned eleven Oscar nominations, three Golden Globes, and even a Grammy. He’s also the only director to have received the Best Director prize at Cannes, the Silver Lion at Venice, and both the Silver and Golden Bear at Berlin.

For me, One Battle After Another felt like a true breath of fresh air in a moment when everything around us seems gray and oppressive. I write these lines under the weight of recent events, ABC’s suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live! following remarks deemed offensive after Charlie Kirk’s murder, months after CBS canceled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. In Brazil, comedians face lawsuits for humor that displeases those in power. Freedom of expression, both in journalism and entertainment, is being smothered, and that suffocation threatens the freedom of us all.

We are living in an age of radicalization, of blind, furious extremism, where reason and calm are drowned out by mobs convinced of their own delusions, waving torches in pursuit of “justice” that is really nothing more than collective lynching.

That’s why I recommend One Battle After Another, which opened worldwide on September 25th. The film exposes the absurdity of all this radicalism and shows that it leads nowhere. What truly matters are the enduring human values championed by figures like Christ, Martin Luther King Jr., Pope Francis, and others. Beneath its political chaos, the film tells a moving love story between a father and his daughter, two people trying to stay connected amid an insane world that has lost sight of what really matters.

So leave the madness outside, step into the dark of the cinema, and let yourself breathe again, for a few precious moments of great filmmaking.

The End