Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is deceptively simple once you watch it from the auteur’s perspective. Between the varied languages, moods, and systems of rebellion against a militarized state, and the cheeky commentary on the big bads who run the show, you’re bound to find yourself a little dizzy trying to figure out a concluding answer to one burning question. How do you fix the world? The ending of One Battle After Another is both a hopeful birth of new rebellion and a daunting reminder that the fight will have to go on, maybe even forever. Because Anderson hardly ever judges a character he cooks up, your feelings about them are all yours. It’s on you to acknowledge that the people who put their lives on the line to fight the brutal system don’t have to be anything more than human. Very flawed humans at that. Anderson means to get revolution off this pedestal where it’s expected to be perfect, pure, and free of terrible mistakes. And his film only wants you to understand just how overwhelming it is for a rebel to stick to their politics in their very human lives. Or even fully realize how much of their politics can actually be implemented into their lives, for that matter.
Spoiler Alert
Why does Perfidia betray her own people?
One Battle After Another’s impartial observer narrative might seem a little too close to being Perfidia Beverly Hills’ voice at times. I think of it as Anderson’s way to try to give Perfidia a voice in a life where all the odds are kind of stacked against her. As one of the leading members of the radical militant resistance group, the French 75, Perfidia comes off as a menacing figure who actually enjoys striking terror into the hearts of the enemy. The ultraviolent sentinels of the selfish state’s evil interests–the police, the military, the banks, the politicians, and everything else that functions as instruments of the government. She does totally lose herself in the thrill of the explosives, the machine guns, and her overwhelming gratitude for being able to help people. When we watch the French 75 group, led by Perfidia and a much more docile Ghetto Pat, the man behind the machines and the explosives, bust into the Otay Mesa Immigration hellhole to free the detainees from the clutches of a lunatic, Captain Steve Lockjaw, Perfidia’s heart must be beating out of her chest, because her entire life’s purpose is to rescue people. But Perfidia isn’t entirely balanced in her head. And there’s no denying that she’s got a lot of issues. She believes in her cause, for sure. Perfidia, like many radical rebels who’ve punked up the movement against a state that’s run by people who believe they’re the only ones deserving of life and its gifts, relishes the adrenaline that comes with doing the right thing by taking up arms. Nothing wrong with that. But Perfidia’s rebel spirit is something that she’s directly inherited from a line of brave Black women who’ve been fighting the system for a seat at the table for generations. These women don’t approve of any softness in the heart of the rebels that can distract them from their singular purpose. Because Perfidia comes from a family that’s always expected her to put her politics first, she couldn’t have had an easy time figuring out who she even was beyond her rebellion. And when somebody is that unexplored within themselves, their emotions are bound to find strange ways to surface. For Perfidia, rebellion had to become her kink for her to even feel sexual.
As someone who’s never had a break to get to know herself beyond her violent operations to relieve the oppressed from their pain, all of Perfidia’s emotional channels are tied to her fight. So it’s really not a big shocker that she’s turned on every time she attacks and defeats the White Supremacist state. Be it blowing up power towers, robbing banks to fund the French 75’s operations, or freeing immigrants from the demonic figure that is Lockjaw, nothing gets a rise out of Perfidia like cutting bullies down to size. That’s mostly what there is to her attraction to Pat. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed how she’s only all over him when he’s coming up with exciting new gadgets to use against the state. That doesn’t mean that Perfidia isn’t in love with Pat. But how’s someone like Perfidia even supposed to know what to do with love? That too for a mostly calm, relatively milquetoast White man that her family doesn’t approve of. She’s drawn in by Pat’s tenderness and sincerity, but she doesn’t know what to even do with these, since the last thing she’s prepared for is to be in a “normal” relationship with a White man, a relationship that requires her to conform to certain heteronormative fundamentals. That’s her biggest ick, and that too has been enforced by her family. All of that is only made insurmountably complicated when Perfidia finds out that she loves the feverish high of having a ruthless representative of the White Supremacist police state grovel at her feet. And it just so happens that Lockjaw would like nothing more than to be crushed under the boot of a powerful, gorgeous Black woman. Such a predicament! It would’ve been fine if it was a one time thing. But as you’d expect from someone as sick as Lockjaw, he gets obsessed with the rush of losing to Perfidia. It’s a rush that gets him to stalk her on one of her “explosive” operations. He doesn’t want to stand in her way at all. That is, so long as she agrees to meet him at his hotel room.
Now, you can see that Perfidia is in a position where she can get away with it for the time being without having to give in to Lockjaw’s wishes. But the problem is, she isn’t completely disapproving of them. In fact, she’s so drawn to the allure of getting to humiliate someone like Lockjaw that she takes a huge risk by actually showing up at his hotel room and fulfilling both of their questionable desires. She’s immediately disgusted by her own actions, as you can see all over her sullen face on her walk back home the morning after. On some level, Perfidia had to have known that in the process of sleeping with Lockjaw for the thrill of power, she’s predisposing the French 75 to dangerous exposure to the enemy. She certainly couldn’t have been naive enough to actually believe Lockjaw’s promise to stay out her way, especially when his actions would depend on her continuous association with him. That’s something she clearly can’t handle. So when she inevitably drifts off, and she’s pregnant with what she’s letting Pat assume is his child, Lockjaw is still on her tail. There’s really no way for Perfidia to be totally certain about who the father of her child is. But just the fact that she suspects she might be carrying Lockjaw’s baby in her womb is probably what makes her want to crawl out of her skin. In all of this, Perfidia is never fair to Pat, who’s always by her side. To cheat on him, and then to keep him in the dark about the fact that Baby Charlene, the child that Pat now loves more than anything in the world, may not even be his baby! Perfidia’s postpartum episode was inevitable. When she was pregnant, and she was shooting her gun and taking shots like her fetus’ well-being didn’t mean a thing to her, it looked like Perfidia might not have wanted her baby to be born. She was stuck in a life, a relationship, and a pregnancy that she wanted nothing to do with. And when postpartum hits, she’s so all over the place that she can’t stand the fact that Pat loves Baby Charlene. That she even suspects that Charlene could be Lockjaw’s daughter is certainly a factor in the disassociation Perfidia feels from not just her child, but her life itself. All of a sudden, she’s found her choices have led her into a life that she never really wanted. Even under less complicated circumstances, I doubt that Perfidia could ever allow herself to be a wife and mother. These roles feel like defeat to someone like Perfidia. Someone who’s been taught to make the doctrine of rebellion the backbone of her very existence. She’s terrified of losing herself in the expectations that come with being the woman in a classic hetero relationship. She might actually be so terrified that she’s convinced herself of all the worst things that Pat can do as the man in the relationship. A White man, that too. A big no no for her grandma. So Perfidia does the only thing that can be expected of someone who only knows to be volatile, reckless, and self-destructive in the face of extreme emotional turmoil. She abandons Charlene and Pat. Whether it’s terrible luck or a suicidal/homicidal decision on Perfidia’s part to shoot a guard on the French 75’s bank stint, she knows what she’s done the moment she kills the man. Her action not only sabotages the entire operation, but it also gets her caught. The police might not have been as fast to reach the place had it not been for Colonel Lockjaw keeping an eye on the ground from his defeatingly loud helicopter. He wanted to get to Perfidia. And the botched bank job has presented the perfect opportunity for this state-funded goon to get her in a tight spot. The options in front of Perfidia are either self-sacrifice or hurting the French 75. When she plays along with Lockjaw’s perverted, abusive fantasy, she chooses the latter.
Perfidia going into witness protection must’ve rattled Pat and her family. But while Pat and Charlene get away, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Perfidia kept mum about them. Not that it would’ve made much of a difference to Lockjaw. He already knew about Pat and Charlene. So if the French 75 weren’t super proactive with getting them out safely, Pat and Charlene might’ve met the same fate as many of the rebels in the group. Perfidia ratted on her comrades and betrayed her rebellion. So I don’t think it would be entirely unfair to conclude that Perfidia never really bought the self-sacrificial nature of the fight that she was taught. That doesn’t make her any less of a soldier for the people. But it does make her a very flawed rebel who bit off far more than she could handle. When Perfidia breaks out of the safe house and runs off to Mexico, she takes some comfort in knowing that she’s at least getting away from Lockjaw. That’s also the only silver lining of the entire ordeal.
Who is Willa’s father?
Col. Steve Lockjaw being a total crazed lunatic from the get go and only getting more awards, medals, titles, and opportunities as a cut-throat soldier of the federal government sounds just about right, doesn’t it? One Battle After Another doesn’t name names or get caught up in the complicated affairs of bureaucracy. But it still paints a pretty accurate picture of a police state that doesn’t even so much as pretend to be a functional democracy. While Lockjaw received endless accolades for crushing the French 75 with intel from Perfidia, Pat and Charlene took up false identities as Bob and Willa Ferguson and moved to the Baktan Cross. One of the key players in French 75, Sommerville, briefed Pat personally before sending him to Denver to plant decoys. I don’t think Lockjaw would’ve spent his time thinking about Perfidia’s ex and their kid had it not been for the Illuminati-like White Supremacist organization that offers him membership based off of the depravity they’ve observed in him. Come on, we all saw them make that damning triangle with their hands when the members of this “Christmas Adventurers Club” sent their prayer up to Saint Nick. Lockjaw is picked because of his abuse of the immigrants. But that’s not enough for the ever-powerful organization which is set on “cleansing” their country of rebels and people of color. It’s funny how one of the big kahunas of the club actually comes out and says that their faith in their superiority doesn’t save any solid foundation at all. It’s not based on intelligence, charm, or wit. Should be a relief for a doofus like Lockjaw. But what does make him anxious is the fact that he has to lie in response to one of the questions he’s asked in his first meeting with the Christmas Adventurers Club. As avid haters of Black people, they deem it a dealbreaker that one of their potential members had sexual history with a Black woman. Lockjaw gets through the first step of the initiation process, despite having lied about his past liaison with Perfidia. I guess when they said that they tend to go “Double Yankee White inquisitions” with their vetting process, they meant that they don’t do a very thorough job.
Also, and I’m not gonna name names here either, but did you see how Lockjaw reacted in a very “presidential” way when he was accused of not being hard enough on people of color? Even Lockjaw knows that it’s only a matter of time before something leads his new friends to the big no-no about him. He’s always wondered if Charlene was his daughter. And now, by sending a Comanche tracker, Avanti Q, to pick up Howard Sommerville from his base in El Paso, Lockjaw is finally on his way to track down Perfidia’s daughter. For 16 years, Bob has somehow gotten by and raised Willa all by himself. I can’t say that he’s done the best job as a father, especially considering he’s now a ne’er-do-well “drugs and alcohol lover” who’s paranoid enough to get right in the face of Willa’s teen friends when they’re at their place to pick her up for the school dance. And I think Bob knows that he hasn’t quite done the best by Willa. That’s why he’s just as surprised as he is thrilled when her teacher tells him that she’s doing great at school. It’s not fair to Willa that she is practically raising her dad when she should get to be a kid and do kid things. She’s grown up hearing about the French 75, and Bob has even let her believe the comforting lie that her mother was a hero. But since Bob hasn’t exactly been a model figure for Willa to look up to, everything she’s grown up to be has been all her. She’s picked up every ounce of positive influence from her father, and though she’s never known her mother, Willa’s certainly inherited Perfidia’s fighter spirit, something that’s found a systematic, meditative channel through her Karate lessons with Sensei Sergio. Bob is a good man in a terrible state. He’s still political to his core. He may not make explosives to win back freedom anymore, but he is fairly bothered by the problematic founding fathers hanging all over the walls of Willa’s classroom. He fights it when he catches himself falling into the toxic patterns of masculinity.
It’s amusing to watch him struggle with his mixed emotions when Willa stands up for herself and decides to go to the dance against her dad’s wishes. He can’t help but admire her no-nonsense attitude, but at the same time, his less-evolved instinct is to feel offended that his teen daughter is defying his orders. Willa’s never quite known normalcy in a life where her paranoid father doesn’t even allow her to have a phone. But only we know that Bob isn’t off-base with his fear of being tracked by the big bad. That’s the last thing that he remembers from all that Sommerville taught him about laying low with a fake identity. Sommerville would’ve taken any amount of pain that Lockjaw and his henchman Colonel Danvers had in store for him in their operation to extract information. But Danvers threatened to go after his sister. Now, keep in mind that these are military officials running an entirely illegal operation and threatening to hurt innocent people to get what they want. I don’t think it gets clearer or more direct than that. So when Sommerville gives up Bob and Willa’s information, and Lockjaw now has all the resources accorded to him by the federal government to go on a hunt for them, what’s keeping them safe? Community and network.
In One Battle After Another, that’s the singular aspect of rebellion that saves the day when all else fails. When Sommerville was taken by Avanti, the kids working with him in his immigrant shelter got the word out on the radio. The French 75 took an awful hit from the terrible betrayal back when Perfidia turned on them. But the revolution is still very much alive, and so are the rebels spread all across the country. Before Pat and Charlene left their old lives behind, Sommerville had come up with an analog trust device. He’d handed these devices to very few people who could trust each other with their lives. Thanks to her paranoid dad, Willa left for the dance with one of these devices. She’s grown up being told over and over again how she should trust a person with her life if they had one of these devices. Only, Willa never thought the day would come. By the time Bob is contacted by the French 75 and told that his nightmare has come true–that Lockjaw is headed to Baktan Cross to look for him and Baby Charlene–Willa’s already out and in danger.
Willa’d been a wee baby the last time Deandra took her in her arms. Deandra’s always been one of the most level-headed, decisive, and strong members of the French 75. So it really couldn’t fall on a better woman to meet Willa at her high school and whisk her away before the freaking military burst in to harass literal children. Bob may be rusty as hell on his rebel vernacular, but luckily, he’s still really quick on his feet when push comes to shove. But true to the film’s title, Bob avoiding being captured by Lockjaw and the military is only the first win in a long chain of fights to come. But the more important thing to address right now is Deandra and Willa’s fight against the White captors who are free to take advantage of a regime that only needs feeble excuses to launch full blown, militarized attacks on the people they think of as “outsiders.” You can’t really hold it against Willa for having a secret phone. She’s just a kid who wants to live a life that at least resembles those of her peers. But the only mistake she made was not coming clean to Deandra about the phone. It’s a treat to watch Danvers and his minions get brutally roasted by Willa’s friends when they try to interrogate the kids. But did you really expect this interrogation to be anything more than a way for the little boys in military costumes to bully high school children? It’s only realistic that one of Willa’s friends breaks under pressure and gives up her secret cellphone number. It’s too bad that by the time Deandra finds out about it and dumps the phone out of the window of their car, Lockjaw’s already tracked their location. I don’t think even Lockjaw was expecting Deandra and Willa’s journey to end at a nunnery of Black women who grow pot and know their way around a gun. These nuns have found a refuge within themselves and the safe community they’ve built for rebels who need a place to lay their heads after lifelong fights. But it seems like they do take in women as long as they do their fair share for the community in return for a place they can call home. Their leader, understandably traumatized by Perfidia’s betrayal and reluctant to take in her daughter, only does so because Deandra vouches for her. This entire ordeal is made all the more tumultuous for Willa because this is the first time she’s heard whispers that make her mom sound like much less than a hero. Deandra doesn’t have any reason to hold it in anymore when Willa asks her outright if her mother was a rat. And the fact that getting to know the truth about her mother and how her flakiness affected countless lives and the rebellion itself only makes Willa hold on to her innate emotional strong points even harder. Willa is a warrior, just like her mother was. She’s practically a picture of Perfidia when her intense training puts a machine gun in her hands. But then again, Willa is nothing like her mother. She’s calm, collected, and always present within herself. It’s a terrible thing that all of their combined strengths are nothing compared to that of the military. So when Lockjaw and Danvers get their men to the nunnery to “do what they do best,” they actually get the job done by destroying the safe haven for Black women by arresting everyone, even Deandra.
Deandra was offered a deal that would allow her to go to prison if she gave up Bob’s location. And that makes me think that Lockjaw and Danvers actually plan to kill all these women. What’s worse? Lockjaw means to take Willa’s fate into his own hands. The capture was inevitable. And so was the way he would lash out at Willa because of the messed up feelings swirling around in his head. The DNA test kit will reveal who Willa’s father is. And based on that, Lockjaw will decide what to do with her. But do you really think that someone as psychotically insane as Lockjaw wouldn’t have hurt Willa even if she’d turned out to be Bob’s kid? I think the crushed male ego of not being able to win “the race” and fathering a child with Perfidia alone would’ve made Lockjaw absolutely lose it. I mean, this is a man who takes Willa’s comment about his very tight shirt as an immediate implication that she thinks he’s gay. He’s not without his insecurities, to say the least. But it’s not much better now that the test results prove that Lockjaw is in fact Willa’s biological father. And that really only feels like a noose around the neck of someone who wants nothing more than to please the White Supremacist boys’ club. So wiping out the very tangible proof of his love for Black women is the only way he knows how to deal with this situation. Any man would’ve been proud to father Willa if they weren’t completely insane. If I haven’t stressed it hard enough already, Lockjaw is a complete nutcase. He’s so crazy that he’s immediately taken on the role of an abusive White boomer dad on his way to hand Willa over to Avanti. I doubt that Lockjaw is uncomfortable with killing women and children. I think the only reason he doesn’t want Willa’s death on his hands is because he isn’t strong enough for the job. He’d much rather give into the delusion of fatherhood for a fleeting moment just to get to feel like he’s done something “normal” in his life. Why else would he be a textbook misogynist, and that too by making things up in his head? When he stuffs Willa into the car and yells at her about how her mother’s raised her to be a brat, Lockjaw is playing out this weird family fantasy. Because, hello? Perfidia didn’t even raise Willa.
Does Willa join the French 75?
Since we mostly know Bob through his associations with the two women Lockjaw has gone after, it can be easy to forget that there’s a human being behind the role he’s always played in other people’s stories. A lot happened around the time that Pat had his heart ripped out by Perfidia. Not only was he completely unprepared to raise Baby Charlene alone, that too while dealing with the fact that Perfidia hadn’t just betrayed him, but the revolution itself, he also had to do it in a completely new place with no known faces around. No support, definitely not a soul to actually talk to, and a whole lot of pain and questions that he didn’t even dare address lest they took over him completely. He’s always gotten by as worst as he can, only to keep Willa safe in a world he knows is out to get her. But maybe there is in fact a little bit of paranoia in him that isn’t completely valid. The world he’s completely locked himself away from has become a little kinder and a touch less ignorant in the 16 years that have passed. That’s how Willa actually has friends despite having Bob for a dad. Can’t be easy. The whole hilarious bit with Bob forgetting the majority of the secret codes and passwords that he’s supposed to have at the tip of his tongue is pretty telling of just how responsible he’s managed to be in the last 16 years. Comrade Josh might seem like a bit much with all these security questions that Bob needs to answer to get to know the rendezvous point. But he’s only doing his job. The entire network of rebels working around the clock to help people relies on their whole trust system as a resolute rule. If that system falls apart, there’s no telling what kind of threat can sneak in and destroy everything. Secrecy is the one thing that keeps the rebels alive. Now, let’s say that Bob was captured and someone else was pretending to be him to seek out secret information from Comrade Josh? He can’t take that chance. So, excruciating as it may be for Bob to cut through the layers of seemingly superfluous espionage regulations, the system exists for a reason. If the French 75 members are people who can trust each other with their lives, they need to make sure who they’re trusting. Bob’s even gotten as far as to continue getting on Comrade Josh’s nerves because Sensei Sergio helped him. When Bob reached out to Sergio and blabbered on about everything that’s been going on, it didn’t even seem like Sensei took him seriously at all. But it only looked like Sensei let Bob tag along to keep him safe because he’s that chill a guy. You couldn’t rattle Sensei with a gun to his face. And I guess that quality really comes in handy as a coyote who manages an underground railroad for immigrants. Sensei’s a hero if there ever were any. And even though he pranks Bob a fair bit, the respect that Sensei has for Ghetto Pat, the war hero that people at the French 75 HQ still revere, is in the selfie that he takes with him. But Sensei expected Bob to be in much better shape than he is after years of abusing drugs and alcohol. So when he sends Bob parkouring over the roof with his boys, the fall is inevitable. Bob’s lucky that a tree breaks his fall. And he’s even luckier that the streets are flooded with protestors furious against the abusive military. He does get arrested, but gets to skip dealing with the police because Sensei has people on the inside who want to help Bob. There it is again–the power of community and connections, and how it’s one the keys to a functional rebellion. Sensei picks him up again, only to hand him a gun and drop him from the running car. Not like he had a lot of other options. A police car is following them. Sensei’s victory dance as he distracts the cops and lets Bob get away is just the right touch of sass that makes the win more wholesome. But it isn’t an easy road for Bob to hotwire a car and tail Lockjaw. In fact, it isn’t even the right road, because Willa isn’t with Lockjaw.
Avanti Q turned out to be a better man than Lockjaw expected him to be when he tried to hand over Willa to him. Avanti didn’t want to kill a child, so Lockjaw wanted him to transport Willa to mercenaries with colder blood. Avanti did seem to follow the order when he dropped Willa off with the bad guys. But I think he had a change of heart, and that didn’t have much to do with Willa’s threat that people would come looking for her. Avanti killing off the mercenaries is just the opportunity that Willa needed to get away and hopefully save her life. So she takes a car and gets on the same road that her dad and Lockjaw are on. Oh wait. These three aren’t the only people in the chain of the most immersively shot car chase. We’ve got Tim over here–straight from the hallowed halls of the mansion where the last Christmas Adventurers meeting was held. It’s practically a divine coincidence that just around the time Lockjaw nabbed Sommerville and flew off to Baktan Cross for a made-up operation, the group’s connection in the police came across old files containing the truth of Willa’s origin. I guess Perfidia’d trusted one of her friends, Junglepussy, with the secret of her rendezvous with Lockjaw. Junglepussy blabbed. And that’s why the Christmas Adventurers Club are now certain that their recent recruit is out on a mission to erase his past. Out goes a deceptively calm Tim. Taking care of a problem like Lockjaw is simple for him. But though Tim shoots Lockjaw in the face, and his car crashes, Lockjaw is a bit of a roach. He’s very much alive, though with only half a face. And he’s crazy enough to actually try to get on the good side of the White Supremacist club once his face heals. Every member of the Christmas Adventurers Club may be absolutely crazy, but even they’re not crazy enough to buy Lockjaw’s take about how Perfidia “reverse raped” him and impregnated herself with his child. So the gas chamber it is for this lunatic. At least one roach is crushed underfoot. But that doesn’t change the fact that the Christmas Adventurers Club are still the all-powerful entity reigning over the whole country. It won’t take them long to hire slightly less unpredictable lunatics to carry out their vicious missions. So it’s a good thing that the revolution will go on. It will go on because Willa is a natural, and there’s got to be more kids like her out there who’ll bring just the right balance of calm and chaos to fix the world to a major extent, though never completely. Tim wasn’t done when he thought he’d killed off Lockjaw. Why not take out Lockjaw’s daughter too while he’s at it? Thankfully, Willa knows better than to keep driving and hope to beat her stalker at a car race. So she stops the car and gets out to wait. Tim certainly didn’t see that coming. But though crashing into the car Willa was driving doesn’t kill him, underestimating her spy skills sure does. Within a matter of a couple days, Willa’s understood the importance of the trust system in the world of rebellion far better than her parents ever did. That’s why she shoots Tim dead without a second thought as soon as he fails to prove that he’s an ally. Even when it’s Bob approaching her, Willa only lets him get close once he completes the code. She’s that unaffected by emotions when it comes to survival and the fight. Bob’s got to be a really proud dad. This is also a genuinely tender moment where, beyond everything else, Willa and Bob’s connection perseveres. Despite her recent learnings, Willa knows in her heart that Bob is her dad.
In One Battle After Another’s ending, love and the normalcy that it brings out in the most eccentric people are what stand out more than anything else. The dust has settled. Willa and Bob are just another teen girl and an old-guy dad when all the horrors of the world leave them alone for a minute. Bob’s analog engineering skills clearly haven’t transferred to the digital side. Leave it to him to take a selfie with the back camera after Willa just taught him how to do it the right way. But I guess it doesn’t sit right with Willa to choose peace, quiet, and willful denial when she knows what’s going on out there. So she’s picked up the baton. And now she’s somebody who’s willing to take on a very rough drive to join protestors fighting the MKU. The most hopeful thing about the person Willa is growing up to be is her fierce optimism in the face of all things awful. When Bob gave her the letter from Perfidia that he’d been holding on to for two years, Willa acknowledged every bit of her mother’s guilt and only felt empathy because she’d come to know how hard it is to fight. Not everyone is as strong as Willa. But every single battle matters just as much as the next one.
