"Neither of those accolades feel like a reach: One Battle is a supreme flex from a director who rarely missteps. It's timely - and even timeless - without feeling needlessly preachy; it lays the state of our nation bare without making the plight of marginalized Americans feel gratuitous. It also delivers one of the best versions of a trope that's been gaining plenty of traction in recent years, that of the white supremacist cult that functions as an all-powerful secret society."
"The latter is a fairly old concept - one, you could argue, is baked into the mythos of our nation itself - and one of the most glaring examples of art imitating life, but it hasn't always been done with the most subtlety. As our own dystopia shifts closer into circumstances that border on fantastical, America's prejudiced origins are impossible to ignore."
"But where those shows largely use white supremacist themes as set dressing, One Battle bakes it into the very fabric of its premise. A buttoned-up hate group known as the "Christmas Adventurers Club" (yes, really) is the catalyst for One Battle' s blistering game of cat and mouse, but its members also occasionally serve as the source of the film's comic relief."
One Battle After Another has opened to widespread acclaim and is being called a major political film. The film balances timely and timeless elements without feeling preachy. The narrative exposes the nation's condition while avoiding gratuitous depictions of marginalized people. The film foregrounds a white supremacist cult that operates like an all-powerful secret society. The concept is tied to America's mythos and reflects art imitating life as contemporary reality trends toward the fantastical. Other genre projects often use such themes as set dressing, but One Battle integrates the hate group into its central premise, mixing menace and dark comedy and posing ethical questions about satirizing real-world hate.
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