In "One battle after another" plays Leonardo DiCaprio the former revolutionary Bob. He lives with his teenage daughter Willa in a cottage in the forest, but Bob's old enemy Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn) is on his trail.
The cottage is attacked, Bob and Willa are separated and he tries to get help from his old friends in the group French 75 to find his daughter. This is followed by a story that covers everything from immigration to the secret white power organization The Christmas Adventurers.
Love for the daughter
It's action and car chases and a lot of humor, but first and foremost it's a story about the love between a father and a daughter.
When you make a movie like this, it must have a center, with human feelings and humor. And then you can spread out other things, such as politics, says Paul Thomas Anderson.
The two organizations in the film, French 75 and The Christmas Adventurers, are loosely based on reality.
French 75 on SLA, the Black Panthers and more, and The Christmas Adventurers on an organization I read about, which existed in California, which was anti-Semitic and not interested in doing to others what they thought others should behave towards them.
About the USA today
Anderson and DiCaprio have wanted to make this film for seven-eight years. It is loosely based on a book by Thomas Pynchon – and although it is a book several decades old, the film feels like it's about the USA today under President Donald Trump.
There is a sentence in the film, after the plot has jumped 16 years forward: "16 years later, the world has changed very little". We all want it to get better, maybe we should be satisfied with taking small steps. We are impatient, we want it to go faster, says Anderson.
Both DiCaprio and Penn have, not unexpectedly, received brilliant reviews. The big surprise is 25-year-old Chase Infiniti, who plays the daughter Willa.
We looked for someone for that role for years. It shows that if you just wait, it will – if you're lucky – happen in the end. This film was waiting to be made, says Paul Thomas Anderson.
And how optimistic is he himself about the future?
I'm not a pessimist. But I'm also the idiot who bangs his head against the wall.
Age: 55 years.
Family: Wife Maya, three children.
Lives: In Los Angeles.
Occupation: Screenwriter, director.
Previous films in selection: "Hard eight", "Boogie nights", "Magnolia", "Punch drunk love", "There will be blood", "The master", "Inherent vice", "Phantom thread", "Licorice pizza".
Current with: "One battle after another" which has Swedish cinema premiere 26/9.
