One of the most emotional moments in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” is a quiet one. As Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Sensei Sergio (Benicio del Toro) drive to rescue Bob’s daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti), Bob laments all he couldn’t do as a single father.
This scene may be even more personal to Anderson than fans realized.
This article contains spoilers for “One Battle After Another.” If you haven’t seen the film yet, do yourself a favor and head to a theater before reading on.
“One Battle After Another” follows Bob and Willa Ferguson, an ex-revolutionary and his daughter who find themselves separated when a former enemy comes knocking on their door. As Willa attempts to evade Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), Bob — who has settled into a permanent high with his best days behind him — enlists the help of her karate sensei in a quest to find her.
On the road to find Willa, Bob confides in Sensei Sergio, sharing the struggles he’s had as the single father of a mixed-race daughter. In a particularly touching moment from DiCaprio, Bob shares that he never learned how to do Willa’s hair.
Fans quickly noticed similarities between this scene and Anderson’s longtime partner, Maya Rudolph — particularly, a 2018 New York Times profile where Rudolph discussed her own single father.
“Rudolph’s father — in her words, a ‘pretty adorable Jew’ — did not know how to do his daughter’s hair after his wife’s death,” Caity Weaver’s article reads. “‘So much of my childhood was dealing with my hair and being super embarrassed by it, mainly because I grew up being the only mixed kid,’ (Rudolph) said.”
Audiences have already drawn comparisons between Anderson and Bob, insisting that his own experience as the father of mixed-race children influenced the insecurities felt by DiCaprio’s protagonist. The revelation that this speech from Bob could be directly pulled from his partner’s own upbringing makes the moment all the more touching.
The scene between Bob and Sergio lies at the heart of many of the themes presented in “One Battle After Another.” When Bob — then known as “Ghetto Pat” — was a part of the French 75 revolutionary group, he fell in love with Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor). After Pat and Perfidia had a child (then known as Charlene), however, they quickly became distant, with Perfidia, in the midst of postpartum depression, struggling to balance her roles as a mother, partner and revolutionary leader against each other. Eventually, she becomes separated from her family, leaving Pat a single father in hiding.
Many have noted that, in the main events of “One Battle After Another,” Bob, who feels guilty over inadvertently drafting Willa into her life-threatening situation, accomplishes relatively little. Though he spends the film chasing after Willa, she gets out of her dire situation without his direct assistance. When Bob has the opportunity to kill Lockjaw himself, he misses the shot. By the time he arrives, Willa has dispatched her final threat on her own. Even as a revolutionary, he failed to leave the world better than he found it.
But it was Bob who taught Willa everything she knows, instilling the knowledge and defensive abilities she uses to survive into his daughter from a young age. Bob urges Willa to take a trust device with her to her school dance, a move that almost certainly saves her life. He may not have saved Willa himself, but Bob arrived in time to give her a shoulder to cry on, drive her home and let her know she’s OK.
“One Battle After Another” is, at its core, a metaphor for parenthood — with the film’s climactic scene literally showing a teenager take their first drive. Bob can’t protect his daughter from the world, nor can he watch over her shoulder for her entire life. Yet he can help prepare her for when danger does come knocking, and be there for her when it’s all over.
Bob doesn’t know how to do Willa’s hair, and he certainly didn’t fix the world. But, as a father, he was there when it mattered.
