Paul Thomas Anderson doesn’t think viewers should try too hard to connect the violence in “One Battle After Another” to reality.
While on the press tour for his latest film, Anderson spoke with the French outlet Le Figaro. Here, he talked about returning to adapt another Thomas Pynchon novel, nearly working with Leonardo DiCaprio in “Boogie Nights” and a missed opportunity to reunite with Tom Cruise on the “Mission: Impossible” franchise.
He also spoke about the notion that his new film’s use of political violence is inappropriate, particularly in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The interviewer also related the movie’s ideas to the slaying of Minnesota Democrat Melissa Hortman.
“It’s a horrible murder,” Anderson said of Kirk’s death in the interview, translated from French via Google Translate. “I don’t think we can bring it back to my film, an action-comedy very far from reality. I’m just trying to sell movie tickets for a fiction movie.”
“One Battle After Another” found itself under a bit of a microscope after the public slaying of Kirk made national headlines. As the murder launched renewed nationwide conversations about political violence in a divided country, it soon cast a shadow over Anderson’s new film, with some outright refusing to engage in the aftermath of the event.
“Anything further stoking our political fires is not something I’m interested in consuming right now,” one X user said on the day of Kirk’s death, opting out of an early screening that night.
This is a minority opinion, though, with the film receiving a large swath of rave reviews. “One Battle After Another” doesn’t open to the public until Friday.
In “One Battle After Another,” DiCaprio stars as Bob Ferguson, an ex-revolutionary whose past comes knocking at his door, threatening the life of his teenage daughter (Chase Infiniti). Anderson’s first movie set in the modern day since 2002’s “Punch-Drunk Love,” “OBAA” is incredibly timely, involving conversations around immigration detention centers, sanctuary cities and white nationalism.
Anderson and DiCaprio have crossed paths before. When the filmmaker was directing his second feature, “Boogie Nights,” he initially offered the role of porn superstar Dirk Diggler to the young actor. DiCaprio turned the part down, putting the ball in Mark Wahlberg’s court.
“I don’t want to talk too much in his place, but he had the choice between ‘Boogie Nights’ and ‘Titanic,’ and I think he considered it important at this point in his career to make a film that could attract a large audience,” Anderson told Le Figaro. “I can understand it. He had already shot several auteur films, very interesting but more confidential.”
