To kick off the latest Masterpiece Weekend™—a biannual get-together my film school buddy and I hold wherein we alternate screening movies we know the other hasn’t seen—I shipped up to Boston on Friday, September 26.
Mere hours after docking, we were opening-night gazing at “One Battle After Another” in fully-immersive IMAX.
The $175 million action-satire is helmed by Paul Thomas “PTA” Anderson (“Boogie Nights”), fronted by Leonardo DiCaprio (“The Wolf of Wall Street”), and inspired by “Vineland” from novelist Thomas Pynchon (Glen Cove native, Oyster Bay High School alum).
This brought Masterpiece Weekend a bit full circle; the first time we were going to catch a film in theaters together was back in 2017, we were poised to see PTA’s “Phantom Thread” at the Brooklyn Alamo Drafthouse—before cost-efficiently pivoting to Dekalb Plaza-certified Katz’s Deli pastrami sandwiches and “The Blues Brothers” instead.
Less broke and extra-stoked all these years later, we found the film—the tale of a burnt-out continental resistance rabble-rouser (DiCaprio) struggling to protect his teenage daughter (Chase Infiniti) when his ex-outfit’s foremost enemy (Sean Penn) and his cavalry come knocking down doors once more—an entertaining entry in a first-rate visionary’s filmography.
Outside of his own works, it was tough to pinpoint clear big-screen comparables for this riot about riots immediately; Sir Steven Spielberg name-dropped Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove." I heard I have to hit Sidney Lumet’s “Running on Empty.” And you can't say strung-out Leo running around town in a bathrobe without saying "Goodfellas" meets "The Big Lebowski."
I can, however, immediately count at least seven parallels the film shares with the ABC mystery/sci-fi drama “LOST” off the riff.
Killing off one of his former protagonists in Act I mirrors “LOST’s” original plan to cast Michael Keaton as plane crash survivor leader Dr. Jack Shephard, only to kill him by pilot’s end—shattering audience narrative expectations thereforth.
Speaking of Jack, his iconic POV stare up at the sky past the trees that surround his secluded, inner-wooded allotment seems to have a spiritual sequel. It comes in the form of Act II DiCaprio’s Code Name: Bob Ferguson snagging a not-so-paranoid peek at the helicopters hella-pursuing his brain-fried behind. Post-island, disheveled Jack and crackpot, whacked-out Bob could definitely throw back many a Modelo together.
“LOST” was co-created by J.J. Abrams, who left day-to-day operations on the show to direct “Mission: Impossible III” — a film PTA reportedly wished his “Magnolia” star Tom Cruise would have offered him the chance to direct, according to a recent interview with Le Figaro.
Even after squashing their rumored rift over the Scientology digs stamped all over “The Master,” PTA appears to have gotten the last laugh when, mid-car chase, Benicio del Toro/Sensei encourages Leo/Bob to tuck and roll out of a moving vehicle “just like Tom f—ing Cruise.”
The “Christmas Adventurers” secret society, keen on disrupting the lives of all those unlike them who cross onto what they perceive as their turf, is pretty Others-coded. Locke’s dad even shows up as one of them; stunt-casting?
Lastly—and spoiler warning—the paternity test big reveal is verbatim Kate’s tragic origin.
Demonstrated in both cases: just because the villainous cretins are fathers doesn’t make them dads.
Bob sure is, though, a clear PTA insert who spilled years of wine ‘till he became Steely Dan.