Woodford on Film

10/10 

 I tried my best to ignore everyone on film twitter praising this movie so I could go in with a clean slate and not be disappointed in case it was mediocre, and boy was I wrong. This movie is a gem and I certainly am not the first or last person to believe that, but even for PT Anderson  (an already great filmmaker) this movie is a class act.

 I won’t get too much into the plot of the film, it’s best if you see it mostly blind. However, I will say this film has a sense of deep modernism that truly floored me. As someone who deeply enjoys most of Anderson’s oeuvre, my one gripe with his work to this point is that he is very much a period-piece fetishist. One Battle, surprisingly, feels so fresh and deeply rooted in the current era. Between this film and Eddington, I think we might finally be moving on from the previous aversion to discussions of society in the 2020s in films.

 The visuals in One Battle are truly unparalleled. Last year when everyone was praising the use of VistaVision in The Brutalist, I always wondered what would happen if the format was used by a more mature and coherent film. The answer is that the framing is genuinely beautiful, despite the deep sense of terror envoked by most of the film. I don’t have to tell you that Anderson is good at setting up a shot, but there are some scenes in this film that feel fantastic even for such a seasoned pro. 

  Speaking of Anderson’s work, this movie feels like a triumphant return from Licorice Pizza, a movie that, while beautiful, is incredibly muddled by the perils of period genre, a bizarre narrative, and half-jokes which never really land. All of these things are remedied in One Battle, almost to a point of feeling like it was made by a completely different filmmaker.

 The film’s script writing is also very smart and salient. There were times the film had me in stitches from laughter and biting my nails from anticipation in the same scene. Each of the characters felt uniquely voiced and internally deep (even if they don’t have a lot of screen time). The script is tied together with a jangly-well score and some great needle drops that work so well to keep up the film’s tone and pacing.

 Without spoiling any of the film’s plots, I’ll just say that there is a lot thematically great things happening in this film. I’ve already mentioned its striking political modernity but the film’s other social commentary is also incredibly interesting. In particular, I though the way the film describes the right wherein there is a “surface level” of evil that is outright and visible and a secretive layer of the right which things that violent extremists don’t go far enough to be very interesting in the current cultural climate.

 It’s hard to pick a stand out performance from this film. Even the side characters who didn’t have a large amount of screen time were played so well as to be memorable in a nearly three hour film. I truly cannot believe that this is one of Chase Infiniti’s first films, she is able to hold her weight among a very strong and seasoned cast. 

 When a film has such a positive reception from critics, it’s sometimes hard to believe it can live up to the hype. Trust me I am very much a skeptic of a film’s Letterboxd score until at least a month after a film has been out but, believe me when I say this is worth the price of a movie ticket. If you can, see this on the big screen. You won’t regret it.