#militant-activism

#militant-activism

A Chadian chemist and a British activist, both born in Jerusalem, vow to fight for Palestine by any means necessary even if it costs them death. Two men devoted their lives to the Palestinian resistance but paid the ultimate price. Bashir Jibril, born in Jerusalem to a Chadian family, joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. He trained military cadres and took part in the 1970 airliner hijackings, before being killed in a car bomb explosion in Athens in 1978.

You could describe the nearly three hours of movie that follows in many ways; as a knockabout satire or a political broadside or, as Anderson put it after a screening this week, "an action comedy with a side of postpartum depression." But one way to think of it is as one man's epic journey to figure out just what the hell is going on.

The revolution is sexy, until it's not. Paul Thomas Anderson's tenth feature, One Battle After Another, finds the director working in what might be his most thematically of-the-moment mode yet, an electric thriller set against the backdrop of political resistance and the resurgence of unbridled white supremacy. At its most basic, it's standard action movie stuff: Leonardo DiCaprio plays Bob Ferguson, an ex-revolutionary searching for his missing daughter.