How would you describe One Battle After Another to someone who hasn’t seen it?
It’s a timely political thriller and father-daughter drama, full of remarkable action scenes. Stealthily, it’s also a startlingly radical movie. Director Paul Thomas Anderson drops you alongside the revolutionaries in the French 75 from moment one of the movie, as they free prisoners of the U.S. government and plant bombs around California.
You don’t get an origin story or why they are so fervent. The movie just assumes that you’re going to be on their side through this story. That’s a really subtle, radical move to make that I don’t think I’ve seen almost any other Hollywood film make, especially not one with a budget this big.
And that’s why it makes so much sense for Bob Ferguson to relax by watching The Battle of Algiers, right?
Yes, Algiers is a true classic that has been embraced by both hardcore leftist and right leaders around the world. It has basically become a manual or a textbook. It was used by the Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1970s. It was used by the Irish Republican Army. During “The Troubles,” it was seen as a film of insurgency.
But it works for both sides. The governments in Chile and Argentina used it as a reference for how to effectively suppress their populations.
What makes The Battle of Algiers so powerful?
There are a couple things: First, the Algerian government, which had recently won its independence from France, wanted to make a movie that showed the world the atrocities committed by the French during the battle for independence. They gave the Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo incredible resources. They let him shoot in Algiers — blowing up real buildings — and provided countless extras so the film looks incredibly realistic. It’s sometimes mistaken for a documentary.
Most crucially, they gave Pontecorvo artistic freedom — and he responded with a movie of incredible moral complexity. He showed the Algerians killing French civilians in cafes as part of the liberation struggle. He also shows the brutal methods of French colonialism, which involved widespread repression, including mass killings and torture of Algerian civilians.
I screened Algiers for students in the fall and the movie still hits hard. The scenes that show dead children being carried out of rubble is shocking in its frankness and its timelessness.
But One Battle is a different kind of movie, right? Its tone is much more varied.
Absolutely. One Battle has more humor, sentiment and genre tropes. But Algiers is morally complicated in a way that Hollywood does not allow Paul Thomas Anderson to be. If you make a $130 million movie, you’ve gotta have a happy ending.
The surprisingly saccharine ending of One Battle is almost a denial of everything that came before it. Somehow the daughter going to a protest is gonna solve these problems? And you’re adding a Tom Petty needle drop to feel good about that?
It’s tempting to read the ending like a 1950s Hollywood film directed by Douglas Sirk, where he wasn’t allowed to give the ending he wanted, so he went way over the top, winking at the audience.