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The so-called “Career Oscar” can be an awkward compliment. There are two types, but both are tinged with embarrassment: honorary Oscars for those who never received a statuette — and competitive awards given to established talent largely due to their unrecognised body of previous work, rather than the film actually nominated that year. Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, Charlie Chaplin, Debbie Reynolds and Peter O'Toole are some of the most egregious examples of the former; Martin Scorsese (The Departed), Paul Newman (The Color of Money), Al Pacino (Scent of a Woman) and Henry Fonda (On Golden Pond) fit into the latter category, where one can hardly say they won for their best work.
This year, the Academy can avoid another one of these by handing Paul Thomas Anderson a best picture Oscar. The superlative One Battle After Another presents voters with an unmissable opportunity to invest in their future selves and save face down the line, after years of leaving a generation’s most acclaimed film-maker without a prize from his industry’s leading body.
The Californian writer/director has come a long way from the 27-year-old wunderkind who dazzled audiences with his second feature in 1997, the porn-industry drama Boogie Nights. That was the first of his films to receive an Oscar nomination and he has been a consistent fixture on ballots ever since, with eight out of his ten features nominated in any category. Overall, Anderson’s films have had 41 nominations and won three awards, for acting, cinematography and costume design. The man behind There Will Be Blood, The Master, Phantom Thread and Licorice Pizza has 14 nominations and zero wins to his own name.
View Green Video on the source websiteOf course, the likes of Sinners and Hamnet should not lose to One Battle because Anderson’s previous films deserved more love in years gone by — that would be the kind of logic that sees the Academy get it wrong so often. Rather, Anderson’s time has come because One Battle is an achievement that stands above the competition in its own right. As with Oppenheimer two years ago, the fact that the statuette would go to an acclaimed-but-unrecognised film-maker is merely convenient for the Academy.
What makes One Battle so singular is its dexterity. Released in September to widespread and breathless praise, not least from our own review, the loose adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland follows paranoid recluse Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) as they are hunted by a ruthless army colonel (Sean Penn), who has history with Bob after the latter's years in a left-wing revolutionary group. It is a film that defies easy genre categorisation in the best way: equal parts political thriller, father-daughter drama, stoner comedy and pulp actioner.
As much as the comedy of Anderson’s script entertains, the film has an astonishingly countercultural edge for something that cost Warner Bros over $100 million. A farcical and shaggy quest for a phone charger is intercut with a riot between immigration enforcement officers and civilians; the best Hollywood car chase since Mad Max: Fury Road is preceded by a gag about Tom Cruise; there are white supremacists who discuss eugenics while calling themselves The Christmas Adventurers Club.
To smuggle this social commentary into such an accessible package should be commended, as unlike the cynical Bugonia, it shows that having something to say about America’s cultural moment should not be at the cost of entertainment. In 1997, Anderson said in an interview that he left film school after a screenwriting teacher told students they should not aim to make Terminator 2. Sean Penn’s near-indestructible villain in One Battle is a middle finger to such snobbery and the Academy should echo the sentiment.
Anderson is something of a shoo-in for the best director prize this year, but in recent years that award has felt like a consolation for contenders whose films are deemed too ambitious for best picture. Just ask The Power of the Dog’s Jane Campion or Roma’s Alfonso Cuarón.
At the time of writing, One Battle After Another is seemingly in a two-horse race with Sinners, the only nominee that can compete in terms of cultural footprint. Ryan Coogler’s blockbusting vampire horror would be a refreshing outlier in the best picture canon, but there’s an argument that a win would not serve it well. Sinners’s strength is in its embrace of horror and the B-movie, but a best picture Oscar off the back of a record 16 nominations would have people debating its credentials among traditional “prestige” dramas, which Coogler’s film has no interest in being.
One Battle After Another would perhaps be a more conventional winner in this regard, but absolutely no less thrilling. An urgent film of resistance and rebellion would be an apposite and culturally confronting choice — and exactly the kind that the Academy should make in a time when America appears on the brink.
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