Gutslammy, power-punchy, fleet-of-mind-and-foot and masterfully crafted as it is, Paul Thomas Anderson‘s One Battle After Another has been defeated in the ongoing online argument over the last two weeks or so, at least as far as the Best Picture category is concerned.
It has lost the verbal battle because everyone realizes it’s a vessel of extreme-left POC girlboss agitprop, and that the rave reviews are basically about fuck-yeah political agreement first and artistic-cinematic admiration second.
Plus it goes against the expanding realization that hard-left wokey wackos have all but destroyed the Democratic party’s profile among middle-of-the-road voters, and that it’s time to pull back on that shit right now and for the wokeys to flee into the forest and stay there.
We all know that Christian Toto made a fair point a couple of weeks ago when he claimed that if OBAA had been about rightwing activists engaged in shootings, robbings and hiding out under fake identities, it would have been totally assassinated by the Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic gang.
So Best Picture-wise it’s over, okay? Forget that category and move on.
PTA’s film will be nominated in eight or ten or even twelve categories, of course (Leonardo DiCaprio for Best Actor without question, Best Director, Cinematography, Best Adapted screenplay + Chase Infiniti‘s category-fraudulent, phoney-baloney Best Actress campaign will probably snag an actual nom), but a Best Picture win is simply not happening.
The top finalists are a pair of emotionally riveting, deeply penetrating family dramas — Chloe Zhao‘s Hamnet vs. Joachim Trier‘s Sentimental Value, which blew the roof off and triggered a standing ovation after a Hamptons Film Festival screening yesterday afternoon at Guild Hall. (Bill McCuddy was there — he saw it, heard it, felt it.)
Hamnet is favored to win, yes, but Value clearly has the stuff to aggressively compete and heel-nip like a sonuvabitch, and it seems to be gaining ground.