It has taken a little while to get going, but a conservative backlash towards Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” is reportedly brewing according to THR.
Anderson’s film, inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s decades old novel “Vineland,” is political by its very nature and begins with a raid on an ICE facility to free detainees, while various scenes deal with immigration topics.
The film also sees government agents coldly executing unarmed suspects and justifying increased force by deliberately inciting violence at a peaceful protest.
The trade says an “assortment of hit pieces” regarding the film have started swirling around over the past week with conservatives concerned the movie “glamorizes left-wing violence and could potentially inspire real-world violence.”
David Marcus at Fox News called the film an “ill-timed apologia for left-wing violence” and adds that “for this movie to make any sense at all, one has to believe the United States, today, right now, is a fascist dictatorship.” Infamous film critic Armond White dubs it “the year’s most irresponsible movie”.
The film follows a burned-out revolutionary (Leonardo DiCaprio) who tries to save his daughter (Chase Infiniti) from a white nationalist military officer (Sean Penn). has drawn some of the best critical reviews of the year and raves from audiences with an ‘A’ CinemaScore. The reaction has been so good that the movie is easily the favourite right now to take the Best Picture Oscar.
