FtWorthHorn said:
ABATTBQ11 said:
I think the message is that "anti-racism" and other "revolutionary" ideologies to tear down power structures require a constant struggle and commitment to the cause and must be taken up by subsequent generations. Hence the name, "One Battle After Another" and why the daughter goes to a protest at the end. That line also plays into that line of reasoning because a core part of revolutionary and progressive ideologies is that no matter how much you tear down, there's always something else to be done because it's a never ending struggle.
You can see it in real life parallels like communism and the civil rights movement. Russian communists starting with the Bolsheviks were constantly using "the revolution" as an excuse for crackdowns, purges, and suppression of civil liberties decades after they seized power. The revolution was glorious and anyone who became persona non grata was a traitor to it. The civil rights act was passed 60 years ago, but we still have modern progressives insisting colorblindness is not enough (and is actually bad) and that we must be "anti-racist" to the point we actively seek out potential racism and eliminate it. That was heavily pushed in the DEI movement of the 2010's and was reminiscent of communists and fascists encouraged or used people to spy on each other and report potential subversives. No matter how far these revolutionary or progressive movements come, there's always something left to be done and a reason to keep fighting, no matter how small or arbitrary, because without that enemy or goal, everything loses cohesiveness and things will inevitably fall back to where they were.
ETA The revolutionaries are clearly the morally superior good guys and protagonists, and despite his disillusionment, Leo comes back into the fold somewhat and his daughter ends up joining the cause in some form or fashion. Given that, I don't think there's a message about the futility of their actions so much as there is a message about the heroism of their commitment and never ending struggle.
This doesn't seem to be about the movie. Hardly anything you discuss is reflected in the movie. The French 75 didn't tear down anything. Again, there is a huge time jump with one line of voiceover which says "very little had changed." They are dead, scattered, and ineffective. And yet the very real thing they are fighting against (a government run by white supremacists) still exists and is as powerful as ever. Lockjaw seems to still have the same job, even! That does not occur in the movie because there is always something else to do. It happens because their revolutionary violence was totally ineffective. The things you are discussing would come from a different movie where the original government had been toppled in the time jump and they found a new target for a new generation. This is not to say any of your observations are necessarily wrong - but they aren't shown in the film.
And Leo doesn't really come back into the fold, does he? He in fact a) explicitly refutes the password/code phrase system when he finally finds Willa, the end of a long run of frustration with the clueless "revolutionaries" and b) is sitting on the couch almost rolling his eyes when she leaves at the end. Even the times he nominally gets back in while on the run are, if I'm remembering correctly, immediately undercut. Doesn't he get the gun, separate from the Sensei, yell "viva la revolucion!" and then immediately fall off a building and get tazed?
When you put it together, I think some of the messages are:
1. Fighting for good things is good if you're doing it for the right reasons
2. It's easy to let a good "cause" turn into ineffective or selfish actions (this is the entire first act of the movie)
3. Taking care of your family or even the people around you (see the Sensei, the only person who is effective in their resistance even while trying to help Bob escape) is far superior to revolutionary violence.
That's if you take it literally at face value, and I think a valid interpretation.
If you look at lockjaw and the government as allegorical, it is a constant fight between revolutionaries and what their revolution is against. Yeah they haven't toppled it because both are representative of their respective ideologies, and the entire point is that it
can't be toppled. That's why I said historical leftist revolutionaries and progressives have never stopped seeing the enemy everywhere. No matter what they do or what progress they make, they view their fight a just as existential as ever. The "other" movie you're describing would hit that way too hard on the nose .
And I see them as being more allegorical because the kind of powerful, white supremacist government that hunts down and kills people probably wouldn't allow any kind of subversives after decades in power. It's not supposed to be real or taken at face value, it's symbolic caricature.
I said Bob *kind of* comes back into it. He's kept his daughter out of it and stayed away from it, but he's drawn back in to an extent. Yes, he has a very hard time, but he's been out of it and stoned for 15 years. He doesn't refute the passphrase so much as he doesn't know it, and she should already know him anyway. The fact he has to keep saying, "It's your dad," over and over kind of makes her seem like an idiot.
And again, going back to the title, the phrase, "One thing after another," is used to suggest an extended or strongly never ending string of events. I think that's more indicative of the overall intent and messing.
