Over break, I went to see One Battle After Another at North Dekalb. I walked into it well aware of my feelings about Leonardo Di-I only date women under 25-rio but I decided I would put those feelings aside and treat him as just any other actor. I walked out of it, still disliking him as a person but man can he act. His performance in this movie helped make the movie what it is. He was angry, depressed, chaotic, and surprisingly funny.
Before I saw the movie I saw the scene of him screaming, “Viva la revolution” and believed that this must be coming from a scene that was powerful, however to my shock it was comedic. The whole theater busted out laughing and thats when I started to really understand the themes of this movie.
The movie, despite being a blatant commentary about how every individual is constantly facing their own battles, was a movie about the people we put on the front lines of revolutions. If you look online you’ll quickly find memes of people saying “you know you’re safe at a protest if a white girl is there” or jokes about sending your white friend to talk to authoritative figures because you know they’ll be treated better. That’s what this movie felt like. Leonardo was the white friend.
At the beginning of this movie there was a scene where he was kissing Teyana Taylor in a car full of people, and she said “do y’all think he likes black girls??” and he replied “I like black girls, you know I like black girls.” In the moment I cringed, and thought it was such a weird thing to say. It felt performative and weird and it had the same energy as him screaming, viva la revolution. It felt like his tastes, his preferences, his romantic relationships, how he approached his job in the revolution, was performative and defiant simply to be defiant, not for a greater cause. Because what revolution was he fighting for? He screams “Viva La Revolution” which in English means long live the revolution, to a Mexican man, it felt like being American and saying “gracias” at a Mexican restaurant. Despite him being the father of a black woman, he is hilariously detached in our eyes because what revolution is a straight white man in America fighting for? What revolution is Leonardo Dicaprio, a white man worth hundreds of millions of dollars known and loved around the world, screaming about? His whole character was ironic, casting him was deliberate.
We as people have these preconceived ideas about gender and racial roles and how people should be doing certain things that correlate with those roles but this movie rips that apart. The sensei of a dojo in this movie is Mexican. The person who comes to save his daughter is a Black woman. The person who leaves Leonardo and Teyanas relationship, is Teyana. The people who save Leonardo are hispanic. This movie pokes fun at the ideas of what we believe a person should be doing, making us question why we have those ideas at all. So in that moment, where Leonardo was frantic because he had found out where his daughter was going, the police were raiding where he was, and he yelled out, “VIVA LA REVOLUTION” to the sensei who was helping a bunch of immigrants who he was housing not be seen by the police, in reality wasn’t a joke. He meant that. But it was comedic, it felt ridiculous, and as a person of color I laughed extra hard. Often times in revolutions it feels like white people get there last, it takes something happening to them for them to realize and have empathy for something many of us have been fighting for years. So it was perfect to me, that the sensei simply put his fist in the air. An acknowledgment of the fight, but a toned down one. Because in reality, white people are often given more space to be loud, to be defiant, while people of color are expected to be quieter in their revolts. Him silently putting his fist up while Leonardo screamed it, was telling of that.
This movie was a great commentary on society and there was so much in it that it would literally be impossible to sum it up in one blog post because of how wonderfully layered it was. This one scene stood out to me because of the comedy and irony of a seemingly serious moment, I still laugh now seeing clips of it. This movie is worth the 3 hour watch, it’s riveting and a commentary on the world we live in now that people need to hear.
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