Every filmmaker’s dream is to receive the glowing reviews bestowed upon Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest, but every rose has its thorn and sometimes critical acclaim can be the downfall of an audience’s experience. One Battle After Another rolled into cinemas on the back of seemingly near-universal five-star reviews and proclamations that it wasn’t only the film of the year, but of the entire decade (and to some, even the century so far), but can this level of acclaim set expectations too high?
Reviews play an important part in the film ecosphere – they are often a key deciding factor for most people when debating whether to devote their time to a film (especially at the cinema), even if, for some, critics’ opinions are boiled down to a percentage on Rotten Tomatoes. Positive reviews can make you more excited for a film and middling ones can bring trepidation or even disappointment before you’ve even seen the opening credits. All of it builds expectation, which in turn provokes comparison as you enter the cinema with preconceived notions of what the film’s strengths or weaknesses might be which may colour your own view. Critics often have the fortune of seeing films with the freshest eyes – their feeds aren’t filled with others’ opinions and they can go in completely cold. The rest of us are rarely afforded such a privilege and thus go into films with the foundation of what others have thought. Reviews and analysis are excellent for thinking critically about art and provoking further debate about films, but if you can’t separate them from your own experience, you’re going to have a hard time forming your own opinions or even enjoying stories as much as you might have otherwise.
With the effusive praise bestowed upon One Battle After Another, it had an extremely high bar to clear. If you repeatedly hear something is the best of the decade, that expectation invites comparison to every other film of the past six years, and that is some stiff competition. It invites comparison to films you’ve seen multiple times or have had longer to settle in your psyche and even ones that have different emotional attachments for you due to where you were in life when you saw them. It is hard for something so fresh to compete with that, particularly if you end up without the ideal cinema experience (talkers and popcorn rustlers, I’m looking at you). Disregarding all of that, it pits a great film against other greats in a kind of ranking that can often be reductive. If you had no preconceived notions and you really enjoyed a film, you might rate it highly. If you were told this was going to be the best film you’d seen in the last ten years and it didn’t quite meet that bar, you might rank it as a disappointment.
Opinions have surfaced online, seemingly mostly from non-cinephiles, that the film was overrated, overhyped and didn’t deserve the praise it got. For many their main criticisms seem to be founded on a disagreement with critics’ discourse i.e. ‘this film was good but not the best of the whole decade, therefore it is overhyped and a letdown’. These unmet expectations extend beyond expectations set purely by the calibre of filmmakers and are due to expectations set by other media. However, but we do also tend to see this with anything that seems to be beloved – people always come out of the woodwork to knock it down a peg – particularly when Oscar buzz gets thrown into the mix (and One Battle After Another jumped right to the frontrunner position for a lot of big categories). This tends to happen for more mainstream successes (think La La Land or even, retrospectively, Titanic), but here, as some have said, we really are talking about the most expensive arthouse film ever made.
This leads me to something else that creates expectation: the marketing. It felt as though One Battle After Another was sold more as a slightly zany comedy, a rickrolling adventure, in a clear attempt to appeal to a mass audience. What else would you expect from a film with such high financial investment at the studio and a lead actor who is one of the last of the true movie stars. They didn’t need to appeal to cinephiles – the new PTA film is an event itself within those circles, regardless of its content or cast – and thus took a more traditional approach. The issue with that is that the idiosyncrasies that are a hallmark of PTA’s work will have potentially jarred for any casual moviegoer going in based off of the trailers or the name above the title. It is definitely one of his more accessible films but it still doesn’t play into convention. Sometimes subverting expectations can be the best thing, taking you on an unexpected journey as long as you allow it to, but other times it might knock you out of the film.
Rewinding further, before reviews, before marketing, the expectations were already high enough at the film’s announcement, purely due to three letters: PTA. Whenever an auteur returns, particularly one with a back catalogue of iconic cinema, the expectations are already sky high and a film that might be deemed good if it had a lesser-known name attached, will be judged much more harshly for its place in the filmmaker’s canon. Rankings abound and One Battle After Another has to contend with the build-up of decades of other PTA films, even another that, at the time, was instantly proclaimed to be one of the best of the century, a mere seven years in (‘I drink your milkshake!’). The excitement of a new release for one of your favourite filmmakers can elevate or impede your experience of the film. You may love it more because of recognised hallmarks of their filmmaking, getting to experience a new story from a visionary you hold so highly or feeling more of a personal investment in its success. However, sometimes hype can build to a degree that sets almost impossibly high standards that a film may have difficulty clearing. Keep the excitement and anticipation but take a few deep breaths when the lights dim and just give yourself over to what is in front of you.
Reviews, hype and critical discourse are all vital and exciting and some of the best parts of being into cinema. They offer a way to engage with a film beyond its runtime and fellow audience members as they spark debates and interesting discussions that can help you to see things from a different perspective or gain a deeper understanding. It’s just important not to let others’ opinions overpower your own or set preconceived notions that can colour your own experience. Read all the reviews you want, or even try going in cold, just try to let a film and your experience of it speak for itself.
