An underestimated “fool” is pitted against an establishment but proves their hidden value to everyone, resulting in their triumph! Fool Triumphant stories are about heroes who don’t fit in but can teach us something about life.
The 3 elements of a FOOL TRIUMPHANT story are:
1) A fool whose innocence is their strength and whose gentle manner makes them likely to be ignored—by all but a jealous “Insider” who knows too well.
2) An establishment, the people or group a fool comes up against, either within their midst, or after being sent to a new place in which they do not fit—at first.
3) A transmutation in which the fool becomes someone or something new, often including a “name change” that’s taken on either by accident or as a disguise.
Save the Cat! Beat Sheet Analysis for One Battle After Another
Opening Image
A lone woman in fatigues strides down an overpass above the Otay Mesa Detention Center where detained immigrants sprawl dejectedly on metallic emergency blankets. As she defiantly pulls on her army cap, a discordant crash of strings musically warns us that the filmic journey we’re about to take will be stress-inducing, violent, and darkly hilarious.
Theme Stated
There are a number of thematic premises in One Battle After Another—the search for identity, the eternal fight against racism, generational trauma—but Grandma Minnie (Starletta DuPois) nails the “Fool” Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) with, “My child comes from a whole line of revolutionaries. And you look so lost.”
Who will succeed—who can succeed—in a world where violence and power trump all, and what could that success possibly look like? Pat may not be the sharpest knife in the cutlery cabinet, but as our Hero, he’s tasked with finding a way to fight for freedom (whatever that means) without destroying everything he holds dear in the process.
Set-Up
In their fraught thesis world, Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) and her lover, Pat, are part of the French 75, a leftist revolutionary group doing your standard leftist revolutionary things like busting immigrants out of detention centers, bombing establishment locations, and getting off on the adrenaline rush of fighting one battle after another.
Pat worships Perfidia and does her bidding, creating and planting explosives, yelling “Viva la revolución!” when appropriate, but also wants to know “the plan” for their continued actions (spoiler: there really isn’t one).
At the Otay Mesa Detention Center, Perfidia confronts the commanding officer Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn doing a white supremacist turn that’s both ridiculously funny and uber creepy) and uses his obvious obsession with her Blackness to gain the upper hand; unfortunately, this is a temporary dominance that he is soon to reverse.
Catalyst
Lockjaw catches Perfidia planting a bomb and demands she meet him for sex in exchange for letting her escape.
Debate
Perfidia gets pregnant, but to Pat’s dismay as the assumed baby daddy, it does not slow her down or make her even a tad “maternal.” When Charlene is born, Perfidia struggles with her identity (and some post-partum depression). While Pat settles into fatherhood easily and naturally, Perfidia abandons her little family to continue on with her revolution activities.
During a bank robbery, Perfidia shoots and kills a security guard, causing the French 75 to go on the run. When Perfidia is caught, Lockjaw sees his chance to own her; he’ll get Perfidia into witness protection if she squeals on her friends.
Pat and Charlene have to assume new identities and go into hiding, and Pat will be required to memorize, and then burn, an entire packet of coded language and passwords that he will need to stay in touch with the resistance.
Lockjaw is awarded a Medal of Honor for hunting down and executing the members of the French 75; only Deandra “Lady Champagne” (Regina Hall) and Howard “Gringo Coyote” (Paul Grimstad) escape.
Lockjaw goes to the safehouse to claim Perfidia (with a bouquet of flowers, no less) only to discover that she has abandoned him and escaped to Mexico. But hey, at least she left him a sweet little love note: “This pussy don’t pop for you.”
Break into Two
A close-up of the baby Charlene cuts to a shot of a 16-year old girl kicking ass in karate class—this is Willa Ferguson (Chase Infiniti), Charlene’s antithesis world identity.
B Story
Pat is adrift from his A Story sticky-situationship with Perfidia, but Willa is the true “Buddy Love” B Story relationship of this film, anyway. Although we know they aren’t actually biologically related, their father-daughter bond is both the heart and the driving force of One Battle After Another, the catalyst that will help the Fool to ultimately triumph.
Fun and Games
In the upside-down world he and Willa inhabit, off the grid in Baktan Cross, CA, Pat has ostensibly undergone the transmutation of the fool triumphant, assuming the name of Bob Ferguson, but the “fit” is uneasy at best. Bob has coped with this cognitive dissonance by becoming a legit stoner, something that troubles his intelligent, strong-willed daughter.
Although perpetually engulfed in a marijuana cloud, Bob protects Willa as best he can, keeping a close, if bleary, eye on her and lying to her about her mother, saying that Perfidia died a hero.
Meanwhile, Lockjaw has become a colonel with rabid anti-immigration policies and is seeking to become a member of the Christmas Adventurers Club, a white supremacist secret society. Unfortunately, in order to join the group and officially become “superior to other human beings,” one of the requirements is never having engaged in an interracial relationship. Oops! Now Lockjaw has to find the physical proof of his affair—Willa—and eliminate her.
A full-fledged military operation ensues under the guise of a heroin bust, but before Lockjaw’s troops can apprehend the target, the dregs of the French 75 are alerted and Deandra reappears to snatch Willa away from a school dance and hide her in a convent of revolutionary nuns, the Sisters of the Brave Beaver.
Bob also gets the call, but after 16 years of smoking weed his baked brain can’t recall the code words or the rendezvous point. Still wearing his ratty bathrobe, Bob escapes his house through a tunnel and seeks out Willa’s sensei, Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro), a leader of the undocumented population in Baktan Cross.
Utterly chill despite the responsibility of running a “Latino Harriet Tubman” operation, Sergio hooks Bob up with three skateboarders who help him escape across the rooftops as the military runs rampant through the town.
Midpoint
In a double-bump false defeat, Lockjaw is able to track Willa from her secret cell phone and Bob falls from a roof and subsequently is tased and captured by the police. The stakes are raised and a time clock starts ticking—how long before Lockjaw’s goons catch up to both of them?
Bad Guys Close In
At the convent, Willa’s world comes crashing down when she finds out that her mother turned on her friends to save herself and the sisters now assume that Willa will be a “baby rat.”
Back at the creepy Christmas Adventurer’s Club, Tim Smith (John Hoogenakker) discovers that their new pledge has a mixed child and it’s his job to “make it clean,” meaning tracking down the race traitor and his bastard and executing them. As Tim heads out, we wonder who will get eliminated first… Bob, Willa, or Lockjaw.
Willa and Lockjaw finally come face to face in the convent’s chapel and he has a portable DNA machine (of course he does) to test Willa’s saliva, but she’s not about to back down, declaring that no matter what the results are, she has a father and it’s not Lockjaw. In response, he gives her a lecture about respecting her elders and hands her over to mercenary Avanti Q (Eric Schweig), who is admittedly reluctant to kill a child.
Meanwhile, Sergio rescues Bob, who is beset by his internal bad guys and gets weepy about being a poor father to Willa before Sergio tosses him out on the side of the road yelling, “Courage!” Bob girds his loins, steals a car, and chases after Willa, finally coming out of his marijuana haze with ratty bathrobe intact.
All Is Lost
Everything looks bleak as:
- Avanti delivers Willa to the 1776, a white nationalist group, to eliminate her
- Tim catches up to Lockjaw and shoots him in the face, causing his car to careen over a cliff, and
- Bob sees the accident and assumes Willa was still in his car.
Dark Night of the Soul
Bob yells in anguish as he runs to Lockjaw’s car and Willa realizes she’s reached the end of her story and will be killed by this far-right militia.
Break into Three
Avanti has a change of bounty hunter-heart and frees Willa, shooting all the militia members and getting himself killed in the process.
Finale
Bob sees that Willa is not in Lockjaw’s car and tries quickly to form a plan to execute, yelling out the French 75 countersign in case she is hiding nearby, then hopping back in his car to chase her down. Willa improvises her own plan, stealing keys and a gun from Avanti’s dead body and escaping in his car. And Tim tries to complete his dastardly plan by chasing down Willa in his own (fancy) car. The amazing race is on!
Thrillingly filmed on a stretch of road known as “The Texas Dip,” the three cars speed over the undulating hills like a highway roller coaster until Willa decides on a new plan that serves up quite the high tower surprise—she screeches to a halt on a blind summit and jumps out, dashing into the brush on the side of the road. Unable to stop in time, Tim smashes into the back of her car and when he reels out, bleeding and unable to recite the countersign, she shoots him dead.
Moments later, Bob pulls up and father and daughter tearfully reunite. Happy ending!
Almost.
Like an Easter resurrection from the depths of hell, Lockjaw has survived his accident and brings his mangled face back to the Christmas Adventurers to beg for one more chance, which they grant, since Lockjaw was “raped in reverse” by a “sperm thief.” Lockjaw is overjoyed at receiving an office where he can hang his bigoted hat, until the room fills with poisonous gas, finally vanquishing the villain. Well, one of them, anyway.
There will always be bad guys and bad systems, which is why revolutionaries are needed. Luckily, Willa has her mom’s spirit and her dad’s eternal love and support. Bob gives her a letter from Perfidia, who apologizes for her failings and says she hopes that Willa will be “the one to set the world right.”
Final Image
Synthesis does not come easily in the resistance, but Bob is finally at peace and can look at himself in the mirror (or in this case, the camera app on his new iPhone). The Fool has transformed and watches with an only slightly anxious smile as Willa riffs on her own version of the Opening Image, hopping in the car and heading out to a protest in Oakland. With much happier music in the background.
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