Michael Mann Calls One Battle After Another a Defining Portrait of Modern America
Michael Mann says Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another captures America’s tense, crisis-struck moment better than anything else.
Paul Thomas Anderson has people buzzing with One Battle After Another. Audiences are raving about the performances and the filmmaking flex, and a few legends have already chimed in with very different reads. Short version: Spielberg is bouncing off the walls, Michael Mann is treating it like a dispatch from modern America, and Francis Ford Coppola liked it... but also wants a redo.
Spielberg: big wow, bigger adrenaline
"What an insane movie, oh my God."
That was Steven Spielberg to Anderson, and he did not stop there. He told PTA the first hour has more action than every other Anderson movie combined, called the thing a wild mix of bizarre elements that somehow feel dead-on relevant, and even suggested it might be more timely now than when Anderson finished the script and started rolling.
Michael Mann: this is what the country feels like right now
World of Reel picked up Michael Mann's take from an interview he did with French outlet Le Point, and it is not light reading. Mann frames America's current situation as serious, life-affecting, and complicated. He points to One Battle After Another as a sharp way in if you want to understand the larger crisis. He contrasts today with the 20th century he lived through, when television could pivot public opinion in a single moment, like Walter Cronkite's 1968 CBS report during the Battle of Hue. In his view, we do not live in that world anymore. Social platforms have turned everything into an always-on overload, and Anderson's film captures that new, chaotic information weather.
Coppola: admiration, plus a few speed bumps
Francis Ford Coppola posted a long Instagram note that lands somewhere between praise and puzzled. He says he loves PTA's work and wants a second viewing of this one. On first watch, he felt the movie finally hit a groove and then slammed on the brakes for a 16-year time jump. Now that he knows that is coming, he thinks a rewatch will let him settle in and focus on the characters and the performances. He also admits his hearing probably muddied some details the first time around. Where he lands is sweet: by the end, the film revealed itself to him as a love story between a father and his only daughter, which hit him hard.
- The performances Coppola singled out: Leo, Sean, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Tony Goldwyn, and Chase Infiniti.
The fun of all this is the spectrum. One Battle After Another is getting the straightforward cheers for craft and acting, but it is also sparking the kind of reactions that say more about the world we are in than just the movie itself. If you want spectacle, Spielberg is telling you to strap in. If you want a mirror, Mann is pointing right at it. And if you want to sit with the characters and let the whole thing breathe, Coppola is basically recommending a second pass.