One Battle After Another
- Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson
- Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti
- Action/Epic/Comedy | R | 2 hr 41 min
- 5 stars
By Reed Ripley
It’s incredible to watch a master at work. That’s the single thought that runs throughout One Battle After Another—Paul Thomas Anderson did it again—and it’s thrilling. One Battle is unrelentingly moving, funny, engaging, and beautifully shot, with an incredible cast put in the absolute best position to succeed, which is simply what PTA does.
There’s only a handful of American directors in the same stratosphere as PTA over the past three decades—think Tarantino, Fincher, Wes Anderson, and Nolan—and even among that group, no one does what PTA does. All those directors are incredibly adept at creating immersive stories and getting their audience to buy in from the jump, which is why they’re so consistently great, but nobody blends pop, earnestness, depth, and craftsmanship like PTA.
PTA’s at his best in One Battle—it’s a sprawling, action-packed popcorn movie filled with guns, explosions, movie stars, chase scenes, and poppy needle drops, but it’s also a sincere film that interrogates what “revolutionary” really means and shows how hope can survive, and indeed thrive, even after generational efforts at change feel, at least on the surface, wasted.
Those feel like One Battle’s dual north stars, and the film effortlessly bounces between them with incredible performances, writing, and cinematography to guide it. And even though heady themes of identity, fascism, and xenophobia are consistently there, the true heart of the story is simply a father trying desperately to find his daughter and leave her with a better world than he had.
Keeping that simple, accessible beat as the throughline, with all the other heavier themes and commentary floating in, out and around, allows everything to shine without devolving into an incoherent mess. One Battle is simultaneously an incredible commentary on our current moment and a striking examination of our past, and it’s also just a super fun time at the movies.
Streaming on HBO Max and other TV subscription services.
Sentimental Value
Directed by: Joachim Trier
Starring: Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Elle Fanning
Drama | R | 2 hr 13 min
4 stars
The term “generational trauma” is thrown out a lot these days, but it’s just a slightly more inclusive variant of something that’s been around since people began putting stories and thoughts to paper (or even stone)—sins of the father. Whether styled as “trauma” or “sins,” both emphasize the negatives of what we inherit from our parents, and what our parents inherited from their parents, and so on and so on.
Sentimental Value doesn’t run away from that concept of inherited emotional or psychological damage—in fact, it often embraces it—but it does interrogate why we’re so quick to latch onto the toxicity. Yes, it’s inevitable that a parent’s issues, no matter how much they may try to fix them, will trickle down in some fashion to their kids, but it’s also inevitable that a parent simply doing their best and loving their kids will foster healing and growth.
That’s what the film offers—a reframing of “generational trauma” into something new, “sentimental value.” That phrase is usually thrown out to describe something cluttering a house that would otherwise be tossed except for some residual connection with someone or some memory, and indeed it’s thrown out early in the film to describe a vase that was presumably collecting dust just hours before.
However, Sentimental Value applies its titular phrase to its characters, and specifically, to the relationship between two sisters, Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) and their detached father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård). Gustav is an internationally recognized, but fading, filmmaker who essentially walked out on his family when Nora and Agnes were still kids, and the film centers on his strained attempt to reconnect with his daughters while he attempts a comeback.
Gustav clearly failed as a father in significant ways, as shown most clearly through Nora’s ongoing and sometimes debilitating bouts of anxiety and depression, but the film also makes it a point from the jump to show Gustav’s love for his daughters, however fleeting it may feel. There’s “value” in that, which is the film’s whole point, and it gets that across beautifully with excellent performances across the board (despite some filmmaking flourishes that at times get distracting). No matter how bad things get, or how much anger or frustration someone has caused over time, if there’s still love trying to break through, then try to let it in.