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It shouldn’t be surprising that among the biggest champions for One Battle After Another is the New York Times’ Kyle Buchanan, who just published a piece on the film, note the photo with the headline that says it all right up front:

“A politically charged movie in a fraught year.”  The story goes:

But at such a politically polarized time, can a movie that touches on white supremacy, countercultural Black revolution and empathy for immigrants strike a chord with audiences? DiCaprio emphasized that despite its politically fraught trappings, the real heart of Anderson’s film is its father-daughter story, as Bob and Willa must bridge their generation gap in order to survive.

“If there are any politics in this movie, I think it’s about how some people are still stuck in their ways and others have embraced the future,” DiCaprio said.

The problem isn’t that “some people are stuck in their ways.” The problem is that one side — the side with all of the power, all of the media, all of the culture — has cast the other side as “racists” for caring about illegal immigration, and has decided that their entire movement is rooted in racism. Sooner or later, every filmmaker attempts the “important” movie because at some point, they want to say more and express more and have their work matter.

Unlike everyone in Hollywood, I actually took the time to get to know the world of MAGA to find out just how much of it was true, all of the things we believe about the other half of the country. To me, a movie about that — about false perceptions and paranoia of our fellow Americans would be moving the needle in the right direction. This, however, will play well with those who see themselves (you know, the people with all of the power) as oppressed.

Not that white supremacists don’t exist, they do, but they don’t make up the bulk of the MAGA movement. They are on the fringe. Most of them are just working people trying to get by in a country whose culture and corporate world has abandoned them. We don’t have people who would ever tell that story. They can only tell this story — those people over there are bad and we are good.

That is not how Hollywood sees it. They believe half of this country is racist — the second Confederacy — and that Trump is a racist and that what drives his movement is racism. They believe this deeply, and that informs everything they do and every film they make that has anything to do with politics. And that will help this movie do very well with Oscar voters.

Having said that, the majority of the reactions last night on Twitter didn’t mention politics much. They praised the film, called it funny and alive — one of the year’s best. I only saw a few tweets that hit that point (as in, “we’re the good people who made this movie and watched this movie, and all of you over there are the “bad people.”)

The rest of the tweets do not mention politics:

Why does this matter that I bring up the politics? It matters for several reasons. The first, an “important” film by Paul Thomas Anderson, is the stuff of Oscar nominations and maybe even wins. It would be the height of irony, I should add, that a white man’s movie about race and racism tops a Black man’s movie about the same topic, but Hollywood, do your thing. It is the same studio, one that also has Weapons. That means Warner Bros. could theoretically dominate the Oscar race with three of the year’s best (and should), though Sinners should walk away with all of the Oscars, if you’re asking me.

The WB can take a well-deserved victory lap this year with bringing in so many original and successful movies, with Sinners and Weapons being original screenplays and One Battle After Another being an “adapted” although PTA only used it as the pretext to tell the story he really wanted to tell. Or so it appears.

And that brings us back to Kyle Buchanan, who wrote this tweet:

Buchanan obviously doesn’t think Sinners can go the distance and doesn’t think much of what everyone else was buzzing about at Telluride. Make of that what you will.

There does seem to be a collective effort for this movie to succeed. Early buzz was that it cost too much to ever make back profits. Speaking of it critically, as I am now, probably wipes out any hope of getting any advertising on this site, but I promised to be straight with you.

The fear is that it won’t make back its money, and that will put a stink on it that could hurt it at the Oscars. Though it probably won’t make Sinners money, it should do well enough to overcome the stigma of not making enough money.

I see this film as landing in multiple categories — sight unseen for me — Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Actor, Supporting Actress, and Supporting Actor. Cinematography is an award that probably wins walking in the door. Score is also another potential win for the movie. Can it take the top prizes? Sure. PTA is as overdue as Ryan Coogler and as successful. If it does, I promise to try as hard as I can to hold my tongue.

A consensus can come together for a wide variety of reasons. I have been writing about what will move the needle now, and nothing will move it more than collective hatred for Trump and the (false) idea that his movement is driven by racism, which gives those at the top a reason to care and a reason to believe they are the ones fighting “one battle after another.” But that consensus is a powerful one, potentially. It might be exactly the right button at exactly the right time.

The WB will have to Sophie’s Choice their contenders – an embarrassment of riches, but everything I know about the Oscars tells me One Battle has a much better chance of winning than a movie about vampires, even if that movie is still the best film of the year.

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