ANDREW LIMBONG, HOST:
The new Paul Thomas Anderson movie, "One Battle After Another," opens on a detention facility at the U.S. border. From there, it does touch on immigration. The movie also gets at radicalism and white supremacy, which is to say, it is a very timely movie. It's really capturing this moment we're in.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) I want you to create a show. This is an announcement of the revolution.
LIMBONG: Lots of movies try to meet the moment, but they don't all do it well. For this week's movie conversation, we're going to talk about whether this one works and which others have in previous eras. Here with us is NPR film critic Bob Mondello. Hey, Bob.
BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: Good to be here.
LIMBONG: And ALL THINGS CONSIDERED producer Marc Rivers - what's up, Marc?
MARC RIVERS, BYLINE: Hey, Andrew.
LIMBONG: All right, Bob, Marc, we've convened. We were all at the same press screening together for this film.
RIVERS: That's true.
LIMBONG: I was immediately struck by how timely this movie felt. Bob, what about you?
MONDELLO: Well, I felt that way, too. The instant that they were in a detention camp for immigration purposes, I was - it was like, well, OK, we're there.
RIVERS: Yeah.
MONDELLO: I mean, that's the opening scene, right? We see Leonardo DiCaprio and Teyana Taylor liberating an immigrant detention camp that's run by ramrod-straight Colonel...
RIVERS: Steve Lockjaw.
LIMBONG: Lockjaw, yeah.
RIVERS: Yeah.
MONDELLO: And he's played by Sean Penn, and boy, does he live up to that name. It's the early 2000s, and DiCaprio and Taylor are members of a revolutionary group that's sort of forced underground at that point. You then flash forward 16 years, and Lockjaw's still on their trail as he curries favor with a bunch of government creeps who are into what they call racial purity.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER")
LEONARDO DICAPRIO: (As Bob) Me and Willa's mom, we used to run around and do some real bad [expletive] together. They got her. Now they're coming after us.
MONDELLO: So what's at play here is, as you said, immigration and leftist fanatics and government figures who are white supremacists, lots of very current stuff.
LIMBONG: Marc, what do you think?
RIVERS: Yeah, I mean, it's - it is so bracing to see a movie, especially on that kind of scale, that essentially says to you and the audience, I see it, too. Like, I see what's happening in the world, and I'm reflecting it back at you. And I think one tends to go to the movies a lot these days, and you don't run into that. And this movie announces it with real force. And yeah, and it's powerful to get that kind of recognition from a movie like this.
MONDELLO: Now, in fairness, there is a reason you don't encounter it very often 'cause it takes years to put a movie together. And...
LIMBONG: I mean, I think PTA was writing this for over a decade, right?
MONDELLO: Yeah.
LIMBONG: He's been working on it for (inaudible).
MONDELLO: This is based on a novel by Thomas Pychon, and the novel was written in 1990.
RIVERS: Yeah.
MONDELLO: And he's been working on it for a while. And I think they were starting shooting in early 2024, and it was finished before the election. So OK, yes, it speaks to this moment in time. But if the election had gone the other way and we had a Harris presidency right now...
RIVERS: I think...
MONDELLO: ...We might not feel the same way about it.
RIVERS: ...The movie still works. I mean...
MONDELLO: Well, yes, it would totally still work.
RIVERS: Yeah.
MONDELLO: It's a wonderful movie, but it wouldn't speak to this moment the way this movie speaks to this moment.
RIVERS: Yeah, well, I think there's something interesting about the kind of temporal non-specificity of this movie. Like, Bob, you mentioned that it takes place in early 2000s, but it doesn't really specify that...
MONDELLO: Sure (ph).
RIVERS: ...Or doesn't designate that. So maybe, like, that opening act takes place now, and the 16 years later flash-forward is into some kind of future, which to me, would kind of act as some - almost a commentary on the cycles of oppression, the cycles of fighting for change that the movie is also about. So I think this movie - I think it would have hit at any moment in the last 10 years, but you're right, Bob, especially now. It's...
MONDELLO: Right.
LIMBONG: Bob, let's think big picture, right? We've mentioned before about how odd it is for big-budget studio production to speak to the moment, whether that's the baggage we're putting on it...
MONDELLO: That's fair.
LIMBONG: Historically, is that a thing that has usually happened?
MONDELLO: No. No, I mean, it's almost impossible to do it. No, the most famous example of a movie meeting its moment in that way is "The China Syndrome."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE CHINA SYNDROME")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Ted, stabilize the reactor.
(SOUNDBITE OF ALARM BELL RINGING)
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Radiation containment.
MONDELLO: It opened in - I think on March 16, 1979, and was the biggest picture of that year so far, at that point, and 12 days later was a absolute must-see for everybody in the world because Three Mile Island happened. You know, this is a nuclear disaster movie about exactly the thing that happened 12 days later. And it just - they were so prescient, and it was amazing. Well, that doesn't happen very often. Mostly what you find is Hollywood trying to duck a moment like that. In 2002, right after 9/11, a whole bunch of movies had to change things because the World Trade Centers were in them.
LIMBONG: Yeah.
MONDELLO: "Men In Black II" had its whole finale changed because it was supposed to take place in front of the World Trade Centers, and they moved it to the Statue of Liberty. Anyway, I mean, it is reasonable to try and pull away from those things. You don't - Hollywood is still a dream factory, and you don't necessarily want the dream turning into a nightmare while you're watching it, right?
RIVERS: Right. I think movies tend to address the times kind of obliquely through metaphor. You know, I think the average person cannot list off a number of movies in the '50s that addressed McCarthyism or the Red Scare. But if you look at something like, you know, "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers"...
MONDELLO: Yeah.
RIVERS: ...That movie in its way, is about the paranoia of that age.
LIMBONG: Yeah.
MONDELLO: Fair.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS")
KEVIN MCCARTHY: (As Dr. Miles J. Bennell) Listen to me. Please listen. If you don't, if you won't, if you fail to understand, then the same incredible terror that's menacing me will strike at you.
RIVERS: Or something like George Romero's "Night Of The Living Dead" - you know, we're in a spooky season now. That film is encapsulating the violent upheaval and sense of things just coming undone of the Vietnam War era.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD")
CHARLES CRAIG: (As Newscaster) These are the facts as we know them. There is an epidemic of mass murder being committed by a virtual army of unidentified assassins. The murders are taking place in villages, cities, rural homes and suburbs with no apparent pattern or...
MONDELLO: As you were saying in the '50s, I was thinking, oh, yeah, and there were all those movies about the atom bomb.
RIVERS: Yeah.
MONDELLO: But they weren't about the atom bomb. They were about giant ants...
RIVERS: Right, or Godzilla.
LIMBONG: Yeah.
MONDELLO: ...From the - near the test site - right? - and coming over to invade us.
LIMBONG: All right, let's talk about recent movies that captured the moment and successfully did it. Marc, you want to start?
RIVERS: One film that immediately comes to mind is Bong Joon Ho's "Parasite" from 2019.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "PARASITE")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character, non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3 AND UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #4: (As characters, non-English language spoken).
RIVERS: I think there's a reason that became the first non-English language film to win best picture at the Oscars because it just - it - you know, it is this entertaining, but a really kind of angry and distressing polemic about class divisions. And, you know, it's coming at this time of this - of our widening inequality gap, not only here but abroad. And I think, also a film like, you know, Jordan Peele's "Get Out."
LIMBONG: Sure.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "GET OUT")
DANIEL KALUUYA: (As Chris Washington) Do they know I'm Black?
ALLISON WILLIAMS: (As Rose Armitage) No. Should they?
KALUUYA: (As Chris Washington) It seems like something you might want to, you know, mention.
RIVERS: Came out in 2017, and President Trump's election - or first term kind of blew up this notion that we were in this post-racial world. And "Get Out," I think, was the kind of snapshot of that explosion, you know, or of the residue.
MONDELLO: That's real nice (ph). That's very nice.
RIVERS: But, you know, to go even further back actually, I've been thinking about "Fruitvale Station." And this is Ryan Coogler's first film, so before "Black Panther," before "Sinners." This is his first film with Michael B. Jordan. And it's about the last hours in the life of Oscar Grant, who was a young Black man who got killed by police in Oakland back in 2009.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "FRUITVALE STATION")
MICHAEL B JORDAN: (As Oscar Grant) We're getting ready to take off, OK?
ARIANA NEAL: (As Tatiana) You guys aren't going to sleep over too?
JORDAN: (As Oscar Grant) We already promised our friends we was gonna (ph) kick it with them tonight. But we'll be back before you wake up, though.
RIVERS: And this movie was released a day before the George Zimmerman trial verdict was announced. This is the man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin. And I just remember the audacity of that movie is its simplicity, that it - that, you know, before these people were - before these - oh, my God, I'm getting emotional. Before these men were - before they were chants, you know, before they were protest calling cards, before they were headlines...
LIMBONG: Before they were hashtags, yeah.
RIVERS: ...Before they were hashtags, they were just people living their lives. And that's all that movie was about is just Oscar Grant trying to...
LIMBONG: Get home.
RIVERS: ...Just trying - yeah, trying to get home, trying to be there for his daughter, for, you know, for his girlfriend, for his family. So that movie, I think, also really struck a nerve at that period and kind of spoke to the kind of call for recognizing the, like, humanity of these Black people, these Black men.
LIMBONG: Yeah.
MONDELLO: Your getting emotional there speaks to a point I was thinking I wanted to make about a lot of this is in the eye of the beholder. When you're looking at these movies, when you're looking at any movie, you're responding to it in a way that is entirely about your reaction to the world. And I mean, I met the love of my life, who was - later become my husband, and I put him on an airplane not sure I would ever see him again and went that night to see the screening of "The Princess Bride" and sobbed through the whole thing.
(LAUGHTER)
MONDELLO: Everybody else around me is laughing, and I'm - oh, my God. But so we see movies through the prism of our own lives, right? And when all of society is experiencing something...
RIVERS: That's when it's special.
MONDELLO: ...In the way that we are now...
LIMBONG: Yeah.
RIVERS: Yeah.
MONDELLO: ...I think, yes, we see movies in that way. And that's why - I think that's one reason that "One Battle After Another" hit me and is hitting audiences as hard as it is. And a bunch of other movies that are coming out this fall are going to do the same thing.
LIMBONG: That's NPR's Bob Mondello and Marc Rivers. Thank you for talking.
RIVERS: You're welcome.
MONDELLO: My pleasure.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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