One Battle After Another doesn’t ease you in. It grins, throws a punch, confuses the hell out of ya, and dares you to laugh while it burns.
This film stretches its run time like a fuse and its like every frame is feeding the fire. What looks like chaos at first, reveals itself as a meticulous rhythm: political, brutal, and too close to home to offer any comfort.
Funny as hell, but never cheap. One Battle After Another takes its time, stretching tone and tension until you’re locked in. The long run time isn’t indulgence, and it never feels like indulgence, not for a minute. It’s absolute necessity.
You can’t clip this story into a trailer, and if you’ve tried to make sense of the trailers, you’ll understand what I mean once you’ve watched it. You have to live inside this tale, frame by frame, minute by minute.
Addressing the elephant in the room: yes, it’s political. But political without speeches or long, drawn-out dialogues about ideology. The closest you get are the rambling thoughts from Bob as he tries to remember “what time it is.”
Still, this movie feels like a mirror tilted toward a future that’s uncomfortably near. One moment you’re laughing at the absurdity, the next you’re hit with something so sharp it leaves you stunned. I kept wondering how the hell this script came together, what kind of mind spins humour and horror into the same breath, so fragmented but still perfectly precise and successful?
As the road winds toward its end, the rolling hills sequence is where it all peaks: pure artistry, as the auteur emerges, scandalous and hilarious in equal measure.
It gets the blood pumping in your veins, and a grin you shouldn’t wear, with a line echoing in your head: “rape in reverse.” What the actual f**k did I just watch?
This film knows exactly when and how to make you complicit. It’s one battle after another.
11
Raw Eleven 
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