The real message of One Battle After Another

0:00 This is my favorite scene in "One Battle After Another."

0:02 (dramatic tense music) It's the moment when two hours in, Willa,

0:12 teenage daughter of revolutionaries, finally meets the story's villain.

0:15 But we realize that she's confronting something

0:17 even bigger and scarier than the bad guy.

0:20 The question of whether her life story as she has always known it is a lie,

0:24 and what she will do when she finds out.

0:26 [Steven] Come closer.

0:33 Movies often have a scene that, if you know how to read it,

0:36 sums up the story and what it means.

0:37 Up until this point, the movie, which by the way we are going to spoil,

0:41 has made us think that it's the story of Willa's mother or her father.

0:45 But listen to Paul Thomas Anderson, the movie's director.

0:48 I loved the roll of the dice for like setting up a movie where you think,

0:51 okay, here's our lead character.

0:52 You know, this is a movie about her.

0:55 He's maybe a supporting part.

0:57 But it's really all just prologue for this girl's story.

1:02 This is the moment we realize that, that the entire movie has been about how

1:05 she got to this moment when the bad guy surprises her with a DNA test.

1:09 Before this, the movie made us think that it

1:12 was about revolutionaries fighting for change in her mom's section,

1:14 or about surviving under fascism in her dad's.

1:17 But actually, it was all set up for Willa learning that this great villain

1:20 is her father and the dilemma that she faces over what to do in response.

1:24 This scene is telling us that the central conflict of the movie is this girl

1:28 inheriting a struggle that her parents started

1:31 and that she will now need to navigate.

1:33 What happens when the sins of these two

1:35 parents are sort of dumped into this girl's lap?

1:39 Well, three parents, right?

1:40 Uh-oh.

1:41 And these characters and their conflicts are all stand-ins

1:43 for a larger story about America, what it's become.

1:46 Willa is our future.

1:48 Her mom and her dad and her other dad represent the past,

1:51 or the present that brought us here, and it turns this movie into something

1:54 much more interesting than heroes versus villains.

1:56 It's a story about what it means to suddenly

1:59 confront who and what we are as a society, to come face to face with that truth

2:03 and have to decide what you, we, do with that.

2:06 So, look, this is a news show.

2:08 Why are we talking about a movie?

2:10 It's because I believe that movies matter.

2:12 Movies aren't just a reflection of our world.

2:14 They shape it.

2:15 They influence how we think about and navigate everything.

2:18 Our politics, our history, our obligations to society and one another.

2:23 What we want from life, how we go about getting it.

2:25 They reveal big truths about our world and help us

2:27 think through big questions about how to live in it.

2:29 That is especially true of this movie, which if you know how to listen,

2:33 has a lot to say about surviving and finding meaning

2:37 in an America that can feel pretty dark these days.

2:41 (tense curious music) We are gonna try to unlock what this movie is saying,

2:49 how it's saying it, and what that means for understanding our world.

2:52 And like a lot of movies, a lot of this gets communicated in the ending,

2:56 but to work our way up to that, this is

2:57 a movie that conveys its ideas through its characters.

3:00 So, that's where we're gonna start and the very

3:02 first one we meet is Perfidia, Willa's mother.

3:05 (intense haunting music) Who sort of represents our recent, more hopeful past.

3:10 It's a little more complicated,

3:12 which we'll get into, but just take that as a starting point.

3:14 Anyway, one way you can tell that last scene we just saw was important is

3:17 that it uses the exact same music (intense

3:20 haunting music) as the opening scene with Perfidia.

3:24 Two hours later when Willa confronts the villain

3:26 the movie wants us to remember back to this moment,

3:30 Perfidia confronting the detention camp.

3:32 This sort of musical echo,

3:34 it's one of the tricks that movies use to tell you what they're about.

3:37 And this is telling us that Willa inherits her mom's

3:40 fight and that they are fighting the same, larger thing.

3:42 And we'll come back to what that is.

3:43 In this very next scene, we learn about Perfidia, that she's in charge.

3:48 I got a plan for us.

3:49 [Max] That she's a fighter for an actual noble- (beeping) revolution.

3:52 [Max] And then she gets a sexual thrill from it.

3:54 And it's those traits that set Perfidia on the journey that will define her.

3:58 It comes in that first scene when they raid the camp.

4:00 She meets the story's villain.

4:02 I'm Captain Steven J.

4:04 Lockjaw.

4:05 [Max] She sexually humiliates him in a way that we can't show here.

4:07 Not on your (beeping) feet.

4:09 To their mutual surprise, they both love it.

4:11 Some people took this as a character flaw on her part,

4:14 or as coming out of nowhere, but to me, it made a lot of sense.

4:18 It's because each hates what the other stands

4:20 for that they get this thrill from playing

4:23 a game of taboo role reversal that changes the course of both of their lives.

4:27 But to the extent that Perfidia represents hopeful aspects of our past,

4:31 like the fight for progress, she's also burdened by that past.

4:34 And that all makes a lot more sense when you see how

4:36 their relationship is drawing on a couple

4:38 of very long-running ideas in American storytelling.

4:42 Like this book Herman Melville wrote in 1855 that still gets adapted a bunch,

4:47 like this movie version.

4:48 It's about a slaver and a slave revolt

4:50 leader whose fight becomes this kind of embrace.

4:53 He looks like he's hugging the slaver here,

4:55 but we know he's actually holding him hostage.

4:58 It's a metaphor for the way that oppressor and oppressed become intertwined.

5:02 Their conflict becomes a kind of weird,

5:05 violent intimacy that chains them both to each other,

5:07 which is what "One Battle" is drawing on when it

5:10 shows these kinked up scenes of another kind of bondage.

5:12 The movie gives us zero reason to think Perfidia loves this guy.

5:16 She hates him, but that means that she loves how humiliating him makes her feel.

5:21 Humiliating the villain feels to her totally consistent

5:24 with fighting to overturn everything he stands for.

5:27 So, she's not troubled by it,

5:28 but for the guy at the other end of the gun that she just lubed up?

5:31 Uh-oh.

5:32 This produces more conflicted desires.

5:34 He's both drawn to Perfidia and hates everything that she represents.

5:38 And this is another idea with a long history in American literature.

5:42 Like in this book, very influential in its day,

5:45 called "Incidents in the Life of a Slave

5:47 Girl" written just before the Civil War.

5:48 And the author, Harriet Jacobs,

5:50 writes about how her master's obsession with controlling

5:53 her as his slave turned into infatuation, which he confused with love.

5:58 Lots of American art ever since explores

6:00 how oppressors reconcile feeling both hate and obsession

6:03 for the subject of their oppression by fixating

6:06 on the aspect that feels most taboo, in this case, their race.

6:10 And partly to justify that desire,

6:12 there is a very old trope of white portrayals of Black women as hypersexualized,

6:17 hypnotizing men with their sexuality.

6:19 Yes, this woman is supposed to be Black.

6:21 It's weird.

6:21 As a way to explain how white men could feel

6:23 attracted to women they were supposed to see as subhuman.

6:26 And that kind of fearful sexualization of Black women has

6:29 been around for so long it even has a name, the Jezebel stereotype.

6:32 And it's so ingrained that it still shows up in psych studies.

6:36 Lockjaw embodies all of this.

6:38 His hate for Perfidia becomes infatuation.

6:41 His infatuation is forbidden,

6:43 and he explains it to himself as a fetish for her race.

6:46 It's his great secret that we see

6:48 in this scene he can only share with one person, his enemy, Perfidia's partner,

6:52 the man who we will later find out is raising Lockjaw's daughter as his own.

6:57 You like Black girls?

6:59 I love them.

7:01 I love them.

7:04 And that partner, Pat, later going by Bob,

7:06 is pulled into his own inner conflict by Perfidia.

7:08 They're raising that baby.

7:10 Baby, where do you think you're going, huh?

7:11 [Max] He wants to choose family over their revolution.

7:14 You realize that we're a family now, right?

7:17 You don't have to do this anymore?

7:19 [Max] But she doesn't.

7:20 I put myself first and I reject your lack of originality.

7:23 Everything is intention now.

7:24 Three characters have been brought together

7:26 and their larger conflict for America's future plus all

7:29 that history hanging over them have left each

7:32 facing some internal conflict over how to move forward.

7:35 Now, those internal psychological conflicts and external political conflicts are

7:39 now all centered on this baby their entanglement has produced.

7:43 And it ends in disaster.

7:44 Each character has lost the thing they most wanted.

7:47 Perfidia loses a revolution.

7:49 Lockjaw loses his love.

7:51 Pat loses his family.

7:52 So, we pretend to be dead folk?

7:55 That thing we just saw where the movie

7:56 jumps quickly between three different perspectives is called cross-cutting.

7:59 It's the movie's way of telling us that all three characters are in a similar

8:03 place and that each has unfinished business

8:05 that will animate the rest of the story.

8:07 And the movie tells us how when it culminates in this.

8:10 (curious music) So many parents told me that they almost

8:15 burst into tears at this simple shot and cannot explain why.

8:20 But I think it feels overwhelming because you

8:22 just watched in the run-up to this moment

8:23 all the darkness of the world that produced

8:25 this child that suddenly give way to this big,

8:28 warm image, the lightness of what she represents now that she's grown up.

8:31 And it's this shot where, alongside a few words.

8:34 [Perfidia] 16 years later, the world had changed very little.

8:37 The movie reveals what it's partly about.

8:39 It's about being a parent who tried to make a better world for your child,

8:43 but failed, and about how it feels to look at that child,

8:46 and wonder whether they'd be strong enough to navigate

8:48 the mess of the world you left for them.

8:50 And that might feel especially resonant in a moment in history when things are,

8:53 and I think the movie wants you to draw this connection,

8:56 getting worse specifically because the forces that Willa's

8:59 parents were trying to fight have won, in both the movie world and in our world.

9:03 Let me show you what I mean.

9:05 We learn that Lockjaw now runs an agency that dresses,

9:08 talks, and acts an awful lot like ICE, seems to be in total control of America,

9:12 and run special forces raids on huddling immigrant kids.

9:15 We seen an actual, real life Homeland Security interrogator.

9:18 This guy's not an actor, this is his actual job.

9:21 (beeping) sitting on plastic in a container, he's still got jokes.

9:24 [Max] There are references to a white supremacist

9:25 cabal that runs the country and to quasi-military dictatorship.

9:29 You know Roy Moore, Fifth Fleet Field General from the southwest.

9:33 The Fifth Fleet is a naval command in the Middle East.

9:35 The implication is they came home to occupy the Southwestern US.

9:39 Just a little fascism Easter egg for you.

9:41 Actually, that's one of a few moments that make

9:43 it feel like the movie might be set, like, five years in our future, right?

9:46 Like here's another.

9:47 Lockjaw gets a fiction award.

9:49 The Bedford Forest Medal of Honor.

9:51 Nathan Bedford Forest was one of the founders of the KKK,

9:54 implying we are in a future America where the government celebrates the Klan.

9:58 We will come back to this timeline thing because

9:59 it is actually really important for understanding the movie's politics.

10:02 The point is this big shot of Willa

10:04 coming when it does hits on feelings you might

10:07 not even realize you have about watching someone come

10:09 of age into a world you couldn't make better.

10:11 That's emotional.

10:12 And it's those feelings we see weighing on another not actually main character,

10:16 Bob, her sort of dad, who I think stands in for our present

10:20 and the ways we might feel about that present.

10:23 Cowed, apathetic, stuck, poor Bob is a shell.

10:26 Sort of crackling tube sound.

10:28 [Max] He's a burnout, useless.

10:30 I know how to drink and drive, honey, I know what I'm doing.

10:32 [Max] Burden to his daughter at a time when she needs him.

10:35 I don't wanna be your babysitter.

10:36 I don't wanna worry if you wrapped your car around a telephone pole.

10:39 This is drawing on a real thing from history.

10:41 Got to read this book called "Days

10:43 of Rage" which is all about ex-revolutionaries

10:45 and their assimilation into the real world and how

10:49 broken they were haunted with memories and guilt.

10:52 "Days of Rage" is a history of 60s and 70s

10:55 left-wing radical groups in the US like the Weather Underground.

10:59 One of that group's flyers is actually the source of the movie's title.

11:02 There are a ton of references to these groups in the movies,

11:04 like their secret code.

11:06 Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, Hooterville Junction.

11:09 [Max] Is a line from a 1970 poem by Gil

11:11 Scott Heron that became an anthem of left-wing radical groups.

11:14 You will not be able to plug in, turn on, and cop out.

11:17 Because Black people will be in the streets looking for a brighter day.

11:21 The revolution will not be televised.

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12:17 Now, let's get back to our video.

12:18 And it's also drawing on what happened

12:20 to those groups after the revolution fell apart.

12:22 This is a documentary about one of them.

12:24 It's full of stories of the movie plucked out.

12:26 I found the idea of turning myself in revolting.

12:30 And I had a baby.

12:32 And the thing is, these groups don't exist anymore.

12:34 So, why would the movie transpose them into the present day?

12:37 You know, if Bob and team succeeded,

12:38 it might read as calling for bringing their brand of activism back.

12:42 The movie only shows them failing, right?

12:44 Poof!

12:45 And I think this makes sense if you know that this movie is

12:47 adapted from a novel called "Vineland." Takes place in the 1980s and it

12:51 depicts 70s radicals trying to find their way in Reagan's America that feels

12:54 like the opposite of everything they'd fought for, adrift and a little dopey.

12:58 [Narrator] And after taking as much time as he could in the bathroom,

13:00 he finally got around to locating the phone and calling

13:04 the local TV station to recite to them this year's press release.

13:08 And remember, like we said before,

13:09 that the movie feels like it's five years in the future, in our future.

13:15 So, okay, it's based on a book about real

13:17 life radicals 15 years after they lost the revolution.

13:20 And yeah, we see our fictional revolutionaries lose,

13:24 and then cut ahead 15 years,

13:25 and the second half of the movie takes place five years in the future,

13:28 which means the first half took place 10 years in the past.

13:31 What's the closest thing we had

13:33 to radical left-wing resistance ten-ish years ago?

13:38 That was from 2017.

13:39 So, maybe I'm off by a few years.

13:41 Maybe the first part takes place in, say, 2020.

13:44 (crowds chanting) Here's what I see when I put all these puzzle pieces together,

13:48 that the revolutionaries in this movie are a stand-in.

13:51 They're a symbol for the protest movements

13:53 that swept America around 2017 to 2020.

13:56 Actually, they're probably a stand-in for anyone

13:57 in that era who thought the country

13:59 was headed in a scary direction and tried to turn back that tide,

14:02 whatever form that took.

14:03 And the movie puts all of that into the stories

14:05 of real 1970s radicals who lost hope and gave up,

14:09 and draws on the novel about those radical struggles to stay hopeful

14:12 in the conservative 1980s because that captures how a lot of people

14:15 in the present day who might have participated in those protests

14:19 or resistance movements or whatever you wanna call it a few years ago,

14:22 feel about their own failures to produce the better world that they wanted.

14:25 And because those people today might identify with those burnt out,

14:29 over the hill radicals.

14:30 They might identify with somebody like Bob.

14:34 We're talking about freedom.

14:35 [Max] He's demoralized.

14:36 When you miss it, it's gone.

14:38 [Max] Lost his edge.

14:39 Well, I don't remember the (beeping) greeting

14:41 code because I got a little bit high.

14:43 [Max] He's kind of given up.

14:44 I don't get mad.

14:45 I don't get mad about anything anymore.

14:47 And the reason we say all this is to underscore that Bob

14:50 has made a choice in the wake of his movement's failure.

14:52 He's going to give up and ride it out, but refusing to fight the evil forces out

14:56 in the world means now they're coming in through the door.

15:03 He's gonna have to fight, but he's terrible at it.

15:05 He actually does not accomplish one thing in this part of the movie,

15:08 but he's not a loser.

15:09 Paul Thomas Anderson has said Bob is showing by fighting

15:12 on that there's nobility in persevering

15:14 for what's right against impossible odds.

15:16 And that's communicated to Bob by a character

15:19 who shows up mid-movie and just steals the show.

15:23 Let's do a selfie.

15:24 Here's another trick movies use when they

15:26 want you to really take something to heart,

15:28 they put it in the mouth of the most charming, likable character.

15:31 That's Sergio.

15:32 (upbeat funky music) Bob is lost because he doesn't know

15:36 how to live in a world where the bad guys won.

15:38 But Sergio gives him and us an answer.

15:41 Partly, he conveys that answer by demonstration.

15:43 His entire life is surrounding himself with family and neighbors who

15:46 he helps to get by, but he also just says it.

15:48 You win some and you lose some, Bob.

15:50 Bob, Bob, Bob.

15:51 You're back on defense.

15:54 That's it.

15:54 Accept the defeat.

15:55 Don't let it define you.

15:57 Go on defense.

15:57 One day, you'll win another.

15:59 And he says another version of this later.

16:00 Tranquilo, Bobby, tranquilo.

16:03 We've been laid siege for hundreds of years.

16:05 We did nothing wrong.

16:08 Don't get selfish.

16:09 Even what feels like total defeat,

16:11 'tranquilo,' stay calm, see the bigger picture.

16:14 Simple, but we get a demonstration of its power in the next scene.

16:17 His city falling into violence,

16:18 but he's still got pals and neighbors, community.

16:21 To pull through together, they keep on living and finding joy even under siege.

16:25 I've reported from a bunch of places mired in dictatorship or war,

16:28 and you meet people like this, a happy warrior because he has to be to survive

16:32 in a time he knows is quite dark and his moments of silliness are part of that.

16:37 Dance for me, sensei.

16:40 You see the absurdity in human nature.

16:42 You try to remain optimistic in the face

16:44 of some of the darker parts of human nature.

16:47 We all approached this story that we knew could be white dark,

16:51 but that a choice that we made was to see some of the light.

16:55 Okay, so remember that big music cue that plays

16:57 at the very start of the movie with Perfidia?

16:59 (intense haunting music) And then again at the big climactic scene with Willa?

17:03 There's one more time it shows up.

17:05 It's when we're following the movie's villain, Colonel Lockjaw, who represents,

17:08 like a lot of the best villains,

17:10 some uncomfortable truths about us as a society.

17:13 Let's start with that bit of repeating music.

17:14 It comes when he meets the leaders of the weird,

17:17 ultra-racist cult that secretly runs the government.

17:19 Our aim and your aim is the same.

17:22 To find dangerous lunatics, haters, and punk trash.

17:27 And stop them.

17:28 Sorry, timeout.

17:28 That's Jim Downey.

17:29 He's a famous comedy writer mostly for Saturday Night Live.

17:32 His forays in front of the camera are rare, but legendary.

17:36 What you've just said is one of the most

17:39 insanely idiotic things I have ever heard.

17:41 I'm talking about Jeff Epstein, the New York financier.

17:44 (laughing) Anyway, back to the scene.

17:46 The fascism Illuminati recruit Lockjaw.

17:48 Do you submit yourself?

17:50 He's delirious.

17:51 This is everything he ever dreamed of.

17:52 But then that score comes back in.

17:55 (intense haunting music) The music is telling us that this is a dark moment,

17:59 just like the other two times we heard it.

18:01 Because the movie is giving us clues to something Lockjaw doesn't know.

18:04 This group will never accept him.

18:05 They made him sneak in the back of the party.

18:07 They openly laugh at him.

18:08 Okay?

18:10 This is a tragic character and the music draws a parallel

18:13 in your mind across the three times you hear it.

18:15 (intense haunting music) Which draws a parallel between these three characters.

18:20 It's saying they're all up against the same antagonist,

18:22 and what is that one, unified, larger antagonist?

18:25 In a literal sense, you could say that it's the innermost fascistic elite

18:30 who are behind each of these things

18:31 these characters are facing in these moments.

18:33 For Perfidia, it's the detention camp.

18:35 For Lockjaw, it's that elite cabal.

18:37 For Willa, it's Lockjaw himself.

18:39 But I think what the movie is really saying

18:41 is that all of these things represent the same larger,

18:43 darker truth about what America is, or at least one side of America.

18:47 The real antagonist isn't some weird guy in a room ranting about.

18:51 Lunatics, haters, and punk trash.

18:53 It's the knowledge that all this cruelty

18:55 and darkness comes from within us as a society.

18:58 That's the big scary thing they're all facing when the music swells like that.

19:01 But anyway, the tragedy of Lockjaw is

19:03 that he thinks that that antagonist is his friend.

19:06 The fragility that he brought to what would otherwise be an obvious

19:10 choice by maybe some other actors to make him purely menacing,

19:15 I just thought he was so incredibly pathetic and almost sympathetic at times.

19:20 And his frustration within his own skin,

19:22 it's a testament to Sean that from time to time

19:26 there would be weird subsets of the crew that would say,

19:28 "I hate to admit this, but I'm team Lockjaw.

19:31 I don't know what is is." (laughing)-

19:33 The villain who's also a victim, it's not new,

19:35 but usually the villain is a victim of society,

19:38 like Killmonger in "Black Panther."- Because

19:40 they knew death was better than bondage.

19:43 And the point of villains like that is to call attention

19:45 to the greater societal harm that turned them into a villain.

19:48 With Lockjaw, he's been brought into a worldview

19:51 that tells him to lock up the woman he loves, to sacrifice his own daughter.

19:55 (Willa screaming)- I have a higher calling.

19:58 [Max] It's filled him with weird, confused racial obsessions.

20:01 I love them.

20:02 [Max] And with insecurity about his masculinity.

20:05 I'm not gay, if that's what you're saying.

20:07 But he's devoted to that worldview because he thinks if he stays true to it,

20:11 it will allow him to join an elite he worships,

20:14 but will never really have him, and who in the end discard him like trash.

20:18 We're not supposed to feel sad for Lockjaw,

20:20 so much as understand that his brutality is all on behalf of this big

20:23 lie that's been sold to him that gets him to destroy his own soul.

20:27 He and what he represents in our culture,

20:29 you can decide for yourself what that is, is meant to seem pathetic.

20:33 Oh, mommy, thank you, sir.

20:35 But he's also the foil against which our main character, Willa, who represents,

20:39 and this is common for coming of age stories,

20:41 our future, who will collectively become what challenges we'll face.

20:45 And for Willa, that means confronting some big truths about her past,

20:48 specifically her parents, truths that have been hidden from her.

20:51 Your dad ever mention Steve Lockjaw?

20:52 He's the one who killed my mom.

20:54 And she's beginning to figure that out.

20:55 My dad told me she was a hero.

20:57 That's the crisis that comes to a head when she meets Lockjaw.

21:03 What she's really confronting is the truth about herself.

21:06 This grotesque man she grew up hating and fearing is also half of her own DNA.

21:11 And this is a twist that might feel familiar because it comes

21:14 straight out of one of the biggest artistic influences on this movie.

21:17 ("Star Wars" theme playing) Maybe the most famous twist in movie history.

21:24 No, I am your father.

21:29 But it's not just a plot twist, right?

21:30 It's about Luke's inner conflict on learning

21:33 he has both good and evil within him.

21:35 And your journey towards the dark side will be complete.

21:39 And that he can't defeat evil in the world until he defeats it within himself.

21:43 Willa isn't tempted by the dark side, but remember she's a stand-in for us,

21:48 figuring out who we are and how to go forward, and yeah, looking at the news,

21:51 this is a moment when we are facing some hard truths about who we really are,

21:55 what's in our national DNA.

21:57 Willa and Lockjaw even have a big argument about,

21:59 on the surface, Perfidia, the person who connects them.

22:01 I loved her, in case you were wondering.

22:03 [Max] But it's really over how they feel about their little family.

22:06 She was a (beeping) rat.

22:07 She was a warrior, a righteous warrior.

22:10 Freedom.

22:10 She was a (beeping) rat.

22:12 This is the whole movie here, the grappling with how their family,

22:15 which remember is a stand-in for America itself,

22:17 can be a product of both what Perfidia represents,

22:20 hope and revolution, and of what Lockjaw represents, hate and cruelty.

22:24 It's a terrible contradiction that neither of them can tolerate.

22:27 Willa responds by rejecting both parents, and Lockjaw responds by trying to have

22:32 the living evidence of that family erased.

22:34 But she escapes, and like any coming of age story,

22:36 sets out on a journey on her own to find her way in the world.

22:40 Which brings us to the big ending, out on the road.

22:43 Again, classic coming of age.

22:46 She confronts the dangers of the world, symbolizing her arrival at adulthood.

22:50 She triumphs.

22:52 But it's not a triumphant moment.

22:54 (screaming) She's anguished.

22:57 Yeah, it's funny because audiences,

22:58 I suppose as they should, they applaud when Willa shoots,

23:01 but it's followed by this really primal scream on her part,

23:05 and you feel the audience go quiet.

23:08 She's still left with that core crisis from the scene

23:10 we talked about at the start of the video,

23:11 this terrible truth that she's inheriting a world,

23:14 and an identity down to her DNA, shaped by the forces of evil having won,

23:18 which is why I think the real ending isn't her shooting the bad guy.

23:22 It's what happens right after that when Bob shows up.

23:26 Both times I saw this in theaters,

23:28 you'd feel every person in that room holding their breath.

23:30 This is a confrontation just as emotionally charged as Willa's with lockjaw,

23:34 except now it's between two people who love each other,

23:37 but she doesn't really know who he is anymore.

23:39 [Willa] Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville Junction.

23:41 No, no, no, baby, it's me.

23:42 [Max] He lied to her about Lockjaw, about her mom, about what the world is.

23:46 She thought her parents were heroes,

23:48 but now she's re-fighting their battles even within herself.

23:51 Who are you?

23:52 This is the line of the movie.

23:53 Who are you if you're not really my dad?

23:55 Who are you if you're not the person who

23:57 fought fascism to make the world safe and better?

23:59 You have to understand that even though, yeah, Willa is the protagonist,

24:02 the author of the story sees himself in Bob.

24:05 This is not a movie made by young

24:07 people expressing their anger at the previous generation.

24:09 It's the voice of people his age, my age,

24:12 somewhere in that range reckoning with the world we're going to pass

24:15 on, and that comes through if you

24:16 hear about how the ending was originally written.

24:19 The finale went a number of different ways in the script,

24:21 and only after shooting it once, first,

24:23 Bob was gonna turn up and maybe get a lucky shot,

24:26 or fall down and kill somebody for her, or something like that.

24:29 None of that quite felt right.

24:31 But the answer to all of these swirling questions for Willa

24:33 and for Bob turns out to be just a few words.

24:36 It's your dad.

24:40 Look at me.

24:42 It's okay.

24:43 This is when your decisions from your past are passed onto her.

24:47 This is the next generation of your daughter

24:50 dealing with the violence of your past, having killed somebody,

24:54 and then realizing that she's in shock and doesn't know who you are.

24:59 His heroic moment is saying, "It's me.

25:02 I'm your father.

25:03 I'm your dad." It felt realistic.

25:05 It felt true.

25:07 It's the movie telling Willa and us, yeah, Lockjaw's cruelty is her heritage.

25:10 Perfidia's betrayal is her heritage.

25:13 But Bob's goodness is still something she can choose for herself and her future.

25:16 She can choose him as her dad.

25:18 Bob offering her that and her accepting, that's the big climax of the movie.

25:27 So, okay, what's it all about?

25:28 Look, this movie is an allegory,

25:30 a story with a larger meaning about America under Trump.

25:33 It just is.

25:34 The filmmakers don't wanna say that because it

25:36 would reduce the movie down to a partisan slogan and then nobody would be able

25:39 to hear the more complicated things it's saying.

25:42 But Paul Thomas Anderson got close in, as far as I can tell,

25:45 in exactly one interview with the Los Angeles Times.

25:48 He said, "The biggest mistake I could make in a story like this is

25:51 to put politics up on the front." He did say the F word,

25:54 yeah, it is about fascism, and people doing bad stuff to each other.

25:57 But he also said when he brought up what's happening right now,

26:00 that what's worse is that it's not going away.

26:02 This has all happened before and it'll all happen again.

26:05 It's something more enduring within America than any one president or event,

26:08 which speaks to that line from Sergio.

26:10 Tranquilo, Bobby, tranquilo.

26:12 We've been laid siege for hundreds of years.

26:14 How do you resist the urge to give up like Bob does when defeat feels total?

26:17 How do you avoid facing a terrible choice

26:19 like Perfidia between your values and your survival?

26:22 What can you even hope for when the Lockjaws

26:23 of the world aren't just in passing antagonists, but part of our national DNA?

26:29 These are the questions Bob and Willa are left with at the end,

26:32 and Bob answers by giving Willa a letter from her mother.

26:35 Okay, I'm gonna share this with you, and if you wanna see it, you can see it.

26:40 [Max] Not because it has the solution

26:42 for their problems or how to save the world,

26:44 but because it'll give her the truth.

26:48 The letter we hear actually borrows a few lines from a real letter that a real

26:52 member of one of those 70s radical groups sent her dad from hiding in 1977,

26:57 including this line.

26:58 [Perfidia] Hello, from the other side of the shadows.

27:00 But it's the last lines of that letter that are,

27:02 I think, a message as much to us as to Willa.

27:06 [Perfidia] Will you try and change the world like I did?

27:09 We failed.

27:12 But maybe you will not.

27:15 Maybe you'll be the one who puts the world right.

27:18 When I look at everything this movie has to say about who we are,

27:22 how we got here, the failure of the movie's heroes,

27:25 who I am sure are meant to stand

27:26 in for the collective failure of anyone who wanted a better world,

27:30 I don't think it's telling us that, yeah, you Willa,

27:32 the next generation, whoever, is gonna smash fascism once and for all.

27:36 Never gives us the slightest reassurance that she,

27:38 we, will succeed where her parents fail, or that the forces of evil who we never

27:43 see at the slightest risk will slow their advance.

27:45 And we wanna believe that life is "Star Wars" and some

27:48 hero will vanquish the dark side for us, but not here.

27:51 Still, the movie isn't resigned.

27:53 Willa sees her parents for who they are and embraces

27:55 the parts of her inheritance that give her something to fight for.

27:59 Bob over Lockjaw as her dad.

28:00 Perfidia's idealism over her betrayal.

28:03 It's telling us that we have to recognize

28:05 our own inheritance as a society for what it is,

28:08 for who we are, but we're not condemned to that.

28:10 Again, it's a big hint that the movie makes Sergio the most likable character.

28:14 He knows he's on defense, but he is fighting on joyfully, and so is Willa.

28:19 Because they see that, and the movie sees that as valuable in itself,

28:23 however impossible the odds.

28:26 (somber piano music)