Will One Battle After Another earn Paul Thomas Anderson his first Oscar?

Dear Gossips,

There are a handful of directors who are events unto themselves. Christopher Nolan, for example, is enough to sell a movie. All you need to see is his name in the credits and people are out here buying tickets a year in advance for hundreds of dollars. And then there’s Paul Thomas Anderson. Every time I’m in a film industry environment, and his name comes up, it’s like we’re talking about god. In my experience, from my own personal observations, PTA fanboys are much more reverential than Christopher Nolan’s. They talk about his work with religious fervour, like they’re not cinephiles but followers in a flock. And in a couple of weeks they are about to be called.

PTA’s One Battle After Another, starring three Oscar winners, Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, and Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, and Chase Infiniti opens on September 26. The premiere was last night in LA, with a Q&A moderated by none other than Steven Spielberg who is the film’s biggest fan. First reactions are now coming out and they are, unsurprisingly, very, very strong. PTA doesn’t make bad movies, which is why so many of his movies are contenders during award season.

What makes One Battle After Another kind of unusual though is the release date. Usually a film directed by someone with PTA’s track record and featuring that high-profile of a cast is reserved for deeper in the fall, when all the awards contenders are jockeying for position. September is weird, but maybe it was strategic after all. Maybe they were confident that two weeks after Venice, Telluride, and TIFF, they would skip the festivals and drop into the Oscar race at a slow time at the box office and send everyone scrambling.

Speaking of the cast, they did a joint interview with Kyle Buchanan for a piece in The New York Times this week in which One Battle After Another is described as a story that “touches on white supremacy, countercultural Black revolution and empathy for immigrants”. I’m sure I don’t have to elaborate on the timeliness of the subject matter and it’ll be interesting to see what the reaction to it is beyond film Twitter and TikTok, and the discourse that will emerge relating it to current real events, especially if it does become a contender for Oscar with a prominent campaign push.

Paul Thomas Anderson has never won an Oscar, probably the most acclaimed director from the west to not have the honour. Some critics are already saying that he’ll be a frontrunner so I imagine this will be the focus behind their award season strategy. And if that’s the case, this is where the heavy hitter actors like Leo and Sean will be putting their energy.

Yours in gossip,

Lainey