In a year full of exceptional movies, with exceptional themes and ideas, playing against the backdrop of a world torn apart by real and imagined wars, it is fitting that a film that encapsulated it all was the big winner of the 98th Academy Awards.

One Battle After Another was that story, which showed us that there will always be people who do the “revolucion” and others who do the dishes, and the world needs both. The world also goes on — letting every new generation have its moments of doing the revolution and doing the dishes.

Paul Thomas Anderson, who co-wrote the film, also took home the director’s award for One Battle After Another, bringing to its craft the same lightness of being as its message. Unlike, say, Sinners, another great film with a powerful message, One Battle After Another didn’t deal in the blacks or whites (no pun intended) but entirely in the greys. Rarely have we needed that space more.

There is the blind passion here of Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), the bathing gown-wrapped preciousness of Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio), the dangerous absurdity of Col Lockjaw (Sean Penn), the wise insouciance of Sensei St Carlos (Benicio Del Toro), and the ferocious innocence of Willa (Chase........

© Indian Express