One Battle After Another is arguably one of the biggest Hollywood movies of the year.
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, the comedy-action-adventure sees Leonardo DiCaprio starring as Bob, a paranoid ex-revolutionary living off the grid. When his daughter Willa (Chase Infinit) goes missing and his nemesis, Colonel Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn), resurfaces after 16 years, Bob stops at nothing to save her from the consequences of his past.
“This is not a typical hero’s story,” said DiCaprio. “My character, Bob, had within him that ability to protect what he loves and to fight for what he loves, but he’s lost that. This whole film is about him trying to rediscover that. It’s about trying to be fearless in an age where we are riddled with fear and constantly silenced, but coming out ofc our shells.”
One Battle After Another begins screening in Philippine cinemas on September 24, but critics worldwide have already begun praising the film and stirring buzz for its upcoming awards campaign. “Anderson… [situates] us in our dismayingly recognizable era of fascist creep,” wrote The Hollywood Reporter, “and following a sadly recognizable underground effort to stop it.”
In this interview exclusive to Rolling Stone Philippines, DiCaprio shared why collaborating with Anderson convinced him to join One Battle After Another, discussed the film’s humor amid its intense action, and explored the deeper narrative of a father’s mission to save his daughter.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
What made you want to be part of One Battle After Another?
Paul Thomas Anderson, more than anything, drew me to this project. To do this film with Paul is very special. I’ve been wanting to work with him for 20-some-odd years now, and to be able to do a film about this subject at this point in time is very meaningful to me. He’s a filmmaker that as a writer-director has been such a unique and profound voice of his generation, and is one of the great filmmakers of his time. I’ve known about him ever since I saw Hard Eight many years ago, and we had talks early on about Boogie Nights, so I’ve watched his incredible career blossom. There are so few filmmakers that have an unexpected way of tackling different subjects, and there’s always such mystery and intrigue, the element of the unknown with his characters and his stories, that makes you want to continue watching his work. He brought this film to me—it was something he was working on for many years—and I simply jumped at the opportunity to be able to collaborate with him.
Can you tell us more about your character?
My character, Bob Ferguson, was based on an amalgamation of different revolutionaries from groups in the late 1960s, which Paul wanted to put in a modern context. What if we had a group of anti-government, anti-establish, anti-capitalism young people that came into something for the right reasons, but then ended up cannibalizing themselves and doing things that they regret? And what happens to the next generation, the offspring of that?
Bob is what I like to call a don’t tread on me, anti-establishment, hippie revolutionary who is paranoid about anything and everything. He doesn’t want to be taxed. He doesn’t want to be monitored. He’s incredibly skeptical of everyone and everything around him. He hides himself off in the middle of the woods and stays home, watches movies like The Battle of Algiers, smokes pot and drinks, but has one objective, and that’s to protect his daughter.
He’s failing at that, until he has to kick into full gear when we see these dark forces from his past come back to get him and the one thing that he’s trying to protect most dearly, his daughter.
Where does the comedy in the film stem from?
As an actor, I never really thought of it as humor; it’s a set of circumstances which are not expected, like we find many times in real life. It’s as simple as, what would happen if this guy got stoned too many times watching TV on the couch, and now he’s not able to fight these forces from his past because he can’t remember this one password? He’s now in what seems like a James Bond movie, but he is not capable or well-equipped whatsoever to deal with the opposition in any way. And that creates a very comedic element that I think just comes naturally. I don’t think it was something that we tried to force.
This is an incredible cast. What was it like working with them?
We talked very early on about who should play Perfidia, and Teyana [Taylor] kept coming up. She needed to be very outspoken. What is freedom for this character is what Paul kept on bringing up, and that is to not have any fear, and Teyana was very fearless in her approach. Paul sets the template by giving you the tools and the soul of these characters, but he lets you own them, and her performance had a profound impact on the story and the characters right out of the gate.
Sean [Penn] plays Lockjaw, an arch villain who’s treacherous, who does horrific things. But he brought a humanity to it and an incredible and unexpected insecurity. Sean was able to pull off this deep feeling of isolation as this threat to his manhood. The role is much more complex than just your standard arch villain, in that respect. There are so many amazing details in his performance. I almost felt sorry for the character in a lot of ways.
I’ve always wanted to work with Benicio [Del Toro]. He had a unique vision for what he wanted this Sensei character to be. He just brought a truth to who this man was, and he was firm in his belief of what he would and wouldn’t do, which created this amazing camaraderie between these two men. They are somewhat friendly, they know each other by way of Bob’s daughter, when they are propelled into a very dangerous circumstance. They share the same integral values of freedom and what is right and what is not right—he has a line that freedom means no fear, and it’s something that my character’s forgotten. Sensei is kind of Bob’s Obi-Wan Kenobi who makes him believe in himself.
Early on, my character early gets mixed up in this world of revolutionaries and probably chose the wrong partner to have an offspring with. Regina [Hall] plays this protector, this mother figure that is trying to protect her loved ones and ultimately a maternal figure to Bob’s daughter, Willa. Regina gives an incredible performance in this movie as sort of the base of moral truth in this frenetic world of revolutionaries that Paul puts forth to the audience. And she was incredible to work with.
And for Willa, we cast an incredible actress in Chase [Infiniti]. She just gives such a riveting performance. We got to spend some time in these great locations sort of hanging out, having coffee. We developed this—I don’t want to say father-daughter dynamic because that’s not what we were trying for off-screen—but this sense of humor and this way of teasing one another that infused its way into the movie and that I think is very authentic for this single dad who has to play the mother figure and the father figure.
Chase really took command of her character. We really needed somebody that could encapsulate the innocence of her generation, the cynicism of what they think of their parents, the world that they live in, and yet be strong and powerful and do this incredible transformation that she has to make in this movie, where that innocence is then lost.
One of the key relationships is the film is between father and daughter. Can you talk more about that?
Ultimately, my character’s main objective, his entire journey in the film, is trying to protect this girl from his own past, and I hope we were able to do that together. The way Willa probably looks at her dad is as completely out of date and out of touch with reality and paranoid and, but ultimately they love each other. Again, she symbolizes the next generation and what they’re going to do, how they’re going to fight back in ways that are different from the generations before them.
What can the audience expect from the film?
It is big in scale and, it does have certainly those elements and this amazing sort of tension to it that starts from the beginning of the story to the end, and as far as spectacle is concerned, arguably one of Paul’s largest. He shot it on film, in VistaVision. The locations were absolutely incredible. And the action sequences are really bold, but done in a way that is in a Paul Thomas Anderson fashion that is very unexpected.
It’s not your traditional action film, it’s not something that has CGI or feels manipulated by technology in any way. It’s very bare bones, real cars, real environments and situations that feel tactile. It’s Paul Thomas Anderson’s version of action, which is unique to any other action film that we’re used to seeing.
One of the things that I always love in movies, whether it be action or suspense or the resolution of something within a sort of finite world, is when it has your attention from the beginning and it lasts throughout the entirety of the movie. There’s not a second that you can take a breath. And those movies really stand the test of time. And Paul really accomplished that in this movie. You’re on the edge of your seat from beginning to the end.
Disclaimer: The article was provided by a third-party content partner, published on Rolling Stone Philippines with permission as an exclusive for the Philippines.
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