One Battle After Another (2025): Shot in VistaVision
2025 • Paul Thomas Anderson • 1.78:1 • Jump to Gallery ↓
Loosely inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, One Battle After Another is a sprawling neo-noir thriller directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. The story follows Bob, a weathered former revolutionary living off the grid, who is forced back into the fray when his daughter, Willa, is kidnapped by a corrupt military figure, a ghost from his radicalised past.
The film’s visual identity is defined by its use of VistaVision, a film format rarely seen in the 21st century. Cinematographer Michael Bauman uses the format’s extra-large negative to capture immense detail and a distinctive widescreen texture that feels tactile. This technical choice creates a striking juxtaposition between the gritty, dust-caked reality of Bob’s off-grid existence and the expansive, panoramic action set pieces of the Californian landscape.
The colour palette reinforces the film’s ideological conflict. Exterior sequences are dominated by sun-bleached earth tones, suggesting freedom. In contrast, the interior spaces of the antagonists are rendered in institutional greys and muted fluorescents, creating a visual language of surveillance and confinement. This chromatic dichotomy visually anchors the film’s themes of the ‘counterculture’ being swallowed by the ‘state’.
Technical Specs:
- The Story: A disillusioned ex-revolutionary must risk everything when his arch-enemy resurfaces after 16 years, and his daughter is kidnapped, forcing him to descend back into chaos and violence in a desperate rescue.
- Actors: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Chase Infiniti, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Wood Harris, Tony Goldwyn, John Hoogenakker.
- Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
- Year: 2025
- Cinematographer: Michael Bauman
- Origin: American Cinema
- Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
- Genre: Black Comedy / Satire / Political Thrillers
