This piece is part of a series of critical responses based on the films nominated for the 98th Academy Awards. In this contribution, Tara Lomax discusses One Battle After Another, which is nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor (twice), Best Supporting Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Original Score, Best Sound, and Best Casting.

One Battle After Another (2025) bears a weight of signification that extends beyond its own formal boundaries. Indeed, its narrative of revolutionary action in a contemporary world is politically and culturally relevant, such that it resonates with a current cultural zeitgeist in ways not necessarily intended by filmmaker, Paul Thomas Anderson (PTA). In a recent interview with Sight and Sound, PTA was asked what impact the contemporary political climate might have had on the film during post-production: “Nothing, because the story is the story. . . But then the irony is, it’s the same headline over and over again. It’s a disease, isn’t it? We like to think that it’s all brand new, but it happened four years ago, it happened before that” (Bell 2026, 27). This speaks to a key sentiment that drives the film’s plot, temporal settings, and its title: its premise is not isolated or singular in its significance but one of unrelenting repetition and persistence, one battle after another.

This sentiment of recurrence also relates to how its allusions to existing works—including films, novels, songs, and political artefacts—extend its signifying potential. While it is credited as an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland (1990)—albeit quite loosely (Sandberg 2026)—its depiction of revolutionary motivation evokes broader histories of political rebellion, civil rights activism, and counterculture, with the title ultimately inspired by a 1960s political manifesto (Bell 2026, 26). Even as One Battle After Another stands out as PTA’s most ‘present-day’ film since Punch-Drunk Love (2002)—and as “certifiably fresh” and original as the film itself might be perceived—it is also indebted to a multiplicity of other existing works, including the song “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” (1971) and films The Battle of Algiers (1966), The French Connection (1971), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Star Wars (1977), Mad Max (1979), Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991), and The Big Lebowski (1998). Allusions to these works vary from explicit to indirect, but all infuse it with deeper expressive power and context.

Allusionism describes the practice of alluding to existing works from film history, primarily as an annotation that provides further context. As Noël Carroll explains, “allusion, specifically allusion to film history, has become a major expressive device, this is, a means that directors use to make comments on the fictional worlds of their films” (1982, 52). Here, Carroll refers to a form of expression that exemplified filmmaking of the New Hollywood era (from the late 1960s and through the 1970s). This was a period of aesthetic revival following the decline of the studio system and was driven by filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, Frances Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Brian De Palma who were immersed in film culture through film schools, filmmaking collectives, film criticism, and wide-ranging viewing cultures that exposed them to international cinemas, alternative cinema, and avant-garde film in tandem with early silent cinema and classical Hollywood. We know this group of filmmakers as the ‘Film School Generation’ and, regardless of whether they actually went to a film school, the point was that they were proud cinephiles who studied film history and used that knowledge to enrich their own work through connections to older films, refine their auteurist voice through a specific curation of tastes, and consequently redefined American cinema through an awareness of film history.

The Night of the Hunter (1955)

Do The Right Thing (1989)

Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

As a form of authorial expression, allusionism is a tool that aims to invoke and embed the signification of older works into the unified whole of another work. Writing about literary allusions, Michael Leddy distinguishes allusions from other forms of quotation or reference in its intention towards invocation, whereby “allusions typically describe a reference that invokes one or more associations of appropriate cultural material and brings them to bear upon a present context” (1992, 112). For example, Taxi Driver (1976) uses a range of allusions to film history—from The Searchers (1956) to Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967)—to ‘invoke the contexts’ of these other films and deepen expression in ways that is not consistent with the characterization of Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (Thurman 2005). Another example of this kind of allusionism at work is in the throughline that occurs from The Night of the Hunter (1955) to Do the Right Thing (1989) and Punch-Drunk Love: in The Night of the Hunter, Reverend Harry Powell (Robert Mitcham) delivers an elaborate sermon on the personal struggle between good and evil that is symbolized by the words ‘love’ and ‘hate’ tattooed on his knuckles; an allusion to this film in both Do the Right Thing (as knuckle rings rather than tattoos) and Punch-Drunk Love invokes this sermon and expands the authorial commentary within these later films. Therefore, this use of allusionism uses the signifying power of film history to say what cannot always be said in different scenarios.

The effectiveness of allusionism as an expressive filmmaking tool during the New Hollywood era was also enabled by a film-going audience that also participated in cinephilic appreciation of film history and cineliteracy. According to Carroll, “such films are the direct beneficiaries of a widespread, eager, contemporary willingness to endorse an explicit film-historical consciousness as a hallmark of ambitious filmmaking and film going” (1982, 56). As such, while filmmakers activated their knowledge of film history for expressive intent, they also used allusionism to outwardly perform their cinephilia in an effort to add credibility to their work. Therefore, allusionism works as a two-way dialogue between filmmakers and their audiences, and it requires filmmakers to trust that the audience would have the film literacy to identify the layers of expression invoked by allusions.

It is in this context that I consider One Battle After Another—and PTA’s broader oeuvre—most effectively recalls a New Hollywood sensibility. To be sure, there has already been cultural commentary directed towards the use of VistaVision cameras that effectively blend grittiness with epic scale that recalls a vintage aesthetic of a former Hollywood. Michael Bauman, cinematographer of One Battle After Another, also recounts PTA’s direction that “it’s got to look like a ’70s movie” (Desowitz 2026). Moreover, the film doesn’t just look like a 70s movie, but it also employs expressive auteurist strategies associated in this period, such that its form becomes imbued with a subliminal history that extends beyond the temporal parametres represented in the story itself. Upon first viewing the film, I was struck by how the film felt so present yet historically contextual, familiar, and tethered to something more beyond its singular textual form. One Battle After Another therefore uses allusionism to extend the boundaries of its expression and deepen its revolutionary context beyond the specific plot and characters of this story.

Allusionism and a cinephiliac admiration for film history are not just critical to One Battle After Another, but also key to PTA’s auteurist signature. In The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson: American Apocrypha, Ethan Warren describes PTA as an “apocryphal historian” who relies on a “shared language between viewer and artist and using reference to mediate the audience’s encounter with the narrative” (2023, xxi)—indeed, this description is very similar to allusionism. This ‘apocryphal’ dimension might seem to undermine the validity of PTA’s historical engagement, but rather it speaks to an ostensibly ‘hidden’ film history that drives signification in his works. In the book Blossoms & Blood: Postmodern Media Culture and the Films of Paul Thomas Anderson, Jason Sperb considers how this allusive practice extends back to Boogie Nights (1992) as a form of “postmodern cinephiliac pastiche” made up of a “hyperreal collage of sights and sounds meant to evoke an affective sense of (cinematic) history” (2013, 83); this also speaks the questionable credibility of representation in his works. Of course, there is much that can be explored in relation to how these ideas might continue to function in PTA’s more recent work, especially Inherent Vice (2014) and Licorice Pizza (2021), but a deeper curiosity here is the dynamic that exists between allusionism, expressive signification, and an ‘apocryphal’ treatment of history through cinephilia. As such, PTA’s use of allusionism in One Battle After Another is less ‘apocryphal’ or hidden but is declared as an act of expressive curation that—much like during the New Hollywood period—works in dialogue with the audience’s shared cinephilia.

With One Battle After Another, these (phantom) threads of authorial expression, allusionism, and cinephilia converged when PTA joined Ben Mankiewicz on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) to celebrate the film’s release as a guest programmer (King 2025). Of the many works that seem to have influenced or been alluded to with One Battle After Another (some referenced above), PTA chose to highlight a compelling collection of films to frame the audience’s entry into this textual world: Running on Empty (1982), Midnight Run (1988), The French Connection (1971), The Battle of Algiers, and The Searchers (1956). The idea of an auteur-curation being used to help communicate the film’s intentions seems to unashamedly reinforce the performative aspects of allusionism, but it also goes a step further to ensure that audiences are cognizant that another layer of significance exists in this film that ties it to a rich tapestry of film history.

Running on Empty (1982)

Midnight Run (1988)

The French Connection (1971)

The Battle of Algiers (1966)

The Searchers (1956)

These five films make up an intriguing curation of various genres, styles, periods, and national contexts to frame One Battle After Another. While films like The Battle of Algiers and Running on Empty invoke an explicit treatment of activism and revolutionary history, Midnight Run stands out for its lighter tone, buddy dynamic and action-comedy premise. What the inclusion of Midnight Run perhaps really draws out in One Battle After Another is a sense of mundanity within an intense or high-stake environment. Midnight Run involves bounty hunters (one played by Robert De Niro), mobsters and the FBI all trying to find and return an accountant (played by Charles Grodin) back to LA, while One Battle After Another depicts an ex-revolutionary (Bob Ferguson, formerly “Ghetto Pat”, played by Leonardo DiCaprio) who can’t remember the password to access information from his former rebel group. Although the allusion to Midnight Run isn’t as strong as some of the other selections in PTA’s curation, its inclusion together with The Battle of Algiers establishes a thematic dynamic between the political and the mundane that underpins One Battle After Another. This dynamic is most explicitly present in the scene where Bob watches The Battle of Algiers while getting stoned.

Of the five films showcased in PTA’s curation, this allusion to The Battle of Algiers is the explicit in One Battle After Another. As PTA notes in the TCM clip (below), the placing of this reference aims to signals how revolutionary action has become so distanced for Bob that it’s now just a nostalgic fantasy reserved for chilling on the couch. This is perhaps at the heart of some criticisms of the film that suggests it doesn’t go far enough politically, only to relegates the substance of its revolutionary politics to “the edges of the frame” (Molloy 2025). In this context, allusions to films like The Battle of Algiers might be seen to do the ‘heavy lifting’ in terms invokes revolutionary contexts, just as allusions in the New Hollywood era were used to invoke contexts that weren’t always explicit within the work itself.

PTA’s curation also includes The Searchers and The French Connection, noting the use VistaVision in the former and the low-budget rawness and a visceral car chase in the latter. In addition to these notable achievements in production practice and craft, The Searchers and The French Connection also invoke periods of revisionism and disruption in Hollywood: The Searchers might be considered a ‘classic’ Western, but its iconicity really comes from its subversive critique of American mythology and heroism that is also alluded to in Taxi Driver; similarly, The French Connection is a cornerstone work of the Hollywood Renaissance that disrupts classical Hollywood conventions (both in narrative form and style) and exposes urban grittiness and corruption through a morally toxic anti-hero. Allusions to The Searchers and The French Connectionin a contemporary work such as One Battle After Another go deeper than admiration or homage but also evoke a critical period of industrial change in Hollywood history that is playing out again in current times.

One Battle After Another is nominated in thirteen categories at the forthcoming 98th Academy Awards, including Best Picture for producers PTA, Sara Murphy, and the late Adam Somner, as well as Best Director and Adapted Screenplay for PTA, and Best Cinematography for Bauman, to highlight only a few. In the lead-up to the Oscars, One Battle After Another has garnered a notable collection of top-billed awards, including Best Film at the BAFTAs, Best Picture at the Critics’ Choice, and Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy at the Golden Globes, which puts the film in high contention for the Best Picture Oscar. Regardless of the outcome on the night, the critical regard and award season success of One Battle After Another—and PTA’s open and forthcoming regard for how cinephilia shapes his expression—draws attention to a creative approach that recognizes the value of film history and cinephilia in a changing cultural and industrial zeitgeist.

References

(Online sources referenced through hyperlink in text)

Bell, James. 2026. “An Audience with the Master.” Sight and Sound 36 (2): 24–34.

Carroll, Noël. 1982. “The Future of Allusion: Hollywood in the Seventies (And Beyond).” October 20: 51–81.

Leddy, Michael. 1992. “Limits of Allusion.” British Journal of Aesthetics 32 (2): 110–122.

Sandberg, Eric. 2026. “It is but it isn’t”: Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another and Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland.” Adaptation 19 (1): 1–4.

Sperb, Jason. 2013. Blossoms & Blood: Postmodern Media Culture and the Films of Paul Thomas Anderson. University of Texas Press.

Thurman, John. 2005. “Citizen Bickle, or the Allusive Taxi Driver: Uses of Intertextuality.” Senses of Cinema 37, https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2005/american-cinema-the-1970s/taxi_driver/

Warren, Ethan. 2023. The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson: American Apocrypha. Wallflower.

Biography

Tara Lomax is the Discipline Lead of Screen Studies in the Master of Arts Screen program at the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS). Her research focuses on contemporary Hollywood entertainment, primarily blockbuster franchising, multiplatform storytelling, and storyworld development. She has published on topics such as the superhero and horror genres, franchising and licensing, transmedia storytelling, storyworld building, and digital effects. Her work can be found in publications that include JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies and Quarterly Review of Film and Video, and the book collections Starring Tom Cruise (2021), The Supervillain Reader (2020), The Superhero Symbol (2020), The Palgrave Handbook of Screen Production (2019), and Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling (2017). She has a PhD in screen studies from The University of Melbourne and is one of the associate editors at Pop Junctions.