Commentary: ‘One Battle After Another’ Combines The Serious With The Absurd
by Frank Martin
Contrasts between tone and subject matter can always make for entertaining storytelling. This is why horror-comedy can be such an effective genre. It takes something extremely dark and adds silliness to make an awkward experience. It doesn’t just have to work in that genre, though. In One Battle After Another, a very dark and dangerous situation is created, but there’s a level of absurdity to the story and its characters that creates the same effect.
The story centers on Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), two revolutionaries who fell in love and had a child. Unfortunately, Perfidia couldn’t give up the revolutionary lifestyle and ended up getting captured by Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn), a military officer who has a sexual obsession with her. Bob goes into hiding with the baby, but is threatened sixteen years later when Lockjaw is set to join an elite political club. Worried that the child might actually be his due to a sexual encounter with Perfidia, Lockjaw stages a military operation that causes complete chaos in order to find the teenager.
Looking solely at the plot, the story is deeply disturbing. It’s about an egotistical narcissist completely bending the rule of law for his own selfish needs, upending the lives of so many in the process. The film could have very easily been a very serious story about power and corruption. Instead, it focuses on ridiculous humor and absurd characters to lighten the tone, which makes for a contrasting experience. At one point, Bob has a long argument with an operator on the phone about forgetting a code word to their rebel network. The entire movie is peppered with comedic moments like that, allowing the film to be both have both terrifying situations and funny dialogue at the same time.
One Battle After Another is now streaming on HBO Max.