HOLLYWOOD – Leonardo DiCaprio knows how to say no. The actor meticulously chooses his roles and thirty years ago turned down the lead in ‘Boogie Nights’. “That’s why when Paul Thomas Anderson came back to me with this imperfect, comedic, and deeply human hero, my yes was instantaneous,” he told a press conference. The star faced critics at the Aster Hotel in Hollywood, where he and his castmates presented ‘One Battle After Another’, the latest feature—a lengthy 162 minutes—from the director of ‘Magnolia’, ‘There Will Be Blood’, and ‘Licorice Pizza’.
Set for release on September 25 by Warner Bros. and inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s novel ‘Vineland’, Anderson’s film is set in 1984 following the re-election of Republican Ronald Reagan. It is an action film of sentiment and pure fun that nonchalantly delivers a ruthless portrait of Trump’s America. It follows the haphazard life of Bob Ferguson (DiCaprio), a former militant in a pro-immigrant fighter group who planted bombs on the Mexico-US border.
Having left the revolution behind and forced to live underground with his daughter (Chase Infiniti), Bob must shake off a stupor of marijuana, couches, and a bathrobe when his old adversary, a white supremacist Army colonel (Sean Penn), manages to find him and capture the girl. He is aided by a brigade of old comrades-in-arms (including a standout Regina Hall) and a phenomenal Benicio Del Toro as a karate master, weighed down by life and beer, who hides Hispanic immigrants in his apartment complex.
“I immediately loved the idea of a man who at first seems destined to be the pure, hard hero,” DiCaprio said of his character, who in the film’s first act fights injustice, knows how to set aside armed struggle to care for his daughter, and doesn’t hesitate to run to protect her. “You expect someone like that to rise up using the tools of his revolutionary past to become the ultimate savior. The film, however, takes a completely different turn,” he smiled.
Bob Ferguson is a militant who builds bombs, frees immigrants from detention centers, yells in Spanish, and passionately kisses his beloved fellow fighter (Teyana Taylor). Yet a solitary life with a teenage daughter he can no longer understand has turned him into a likable, slightly paranoid slacker. “I like the subversion of expectations: you imagine he’ll use extraordinary spy skills, but instead, after 16 years in hiding, he can’t even remember a password. It’s this detail that outlines a deeply imperfect heroic dynamic that I found irresistible.”
To embody the role, DiCaprio grew out his hair and beard, wore comfortable shoes and a flannel bathrobe. “I’d be lying if I didn’t admit it was extremely liberating!” he said, citing obvious influences like Jeff Bridges’ Drugo in ‘The Big Lebowski’ or Al Pacino in ‘Dog Day Afternoon’, “for that fanaticism that forces you to come back to protect who you love.”
The star doesn’t shy away from references to current events, though the film at times plays like a hallucinatory (and unintentional) documentary on the militarization of power and the extreme, cruel control of immigration. He prefers to indulge in the humanity of his character. Only now—months after filming, seeing the complete picture—does he claim to have understood “where his deepest heroism lies: in the simple act of moving forward, of not giving up.”