Leonardo DiCaprio and Benicio Del Toro on ‘One Battle After Another’: 'It's a mirror for what's going on in our world'

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Leonardo DiCaprio had been wanting to work with Paul Thomas Anderson for nearly 30 years.

The Oscar winner famously turned down the leading role in Anderson’s 1997 drama Boogie Nights— a move he told Esquire in a recent cover story that he regrets. But with their first partnership, One Battle After Another, hitting theatres this week, DiCaprio says that he’s glad they’re finally teaming up for a project that blends so many of the genres he loves, including action and political satire.

The ambitious new film from Anderson, simply referred to by movie lovers as PTA, fleshes out ideas the Oscar-nominated writer and director has been kicking around for almost two decades.

In his latest work, DiCaprio plays Bob Ferguson, a onetime member of a revolutionary group who is forced back into action when a ruthless enemy from his past (played by Sean Penn) resurfaces and his teenage daughter (newcomer Chase Infiniti, in her film debut) goes missing.

Roused from his mid-life malaise, Bob embarks on a mission to find his child with the help of her resourceful martial-arts instructor (Benicio Del Toro). Distrustful of the world around him — and often stoned — Bob finds himself thrust into a modern-day world that has little use for his type of activism.

The ensemble cast also includes Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Tony Goldwyn and Alana Haim.

With a storyline that doesn’t shy away from hot-button issues that exist in society today like polarizing politics, immigration raids and White supremacy, DiCaprio, 50, says Anderson, the filmmaker who was also behind Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood, Phantom Thread and Licorice Pizza, has crafted his most urgent work yet.

“These issues are relevant and it’s powerful, man,” DiCaprio tells Postmedia in a video interview from Los Angeles. “It’s a powerful movie.”

But at its heart, DiCaprio says the film is about a father and daughter who are just trying to reconnect amid a swirl of sinister forces descending in around them and their off-the-grid life.

Anderson says during a virtual press conference that his story, which is loosely adapts Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 Reagan-era novel Vineland, was everchanging.

“I might’ve been noodling around with this and writing it for 20 years, but Benicio came in to do his sequence and we wrote the best sequence in the movie in a day and a night at dinner, really. So it’s always evolving,” he says.

“We have our premise, we have our story points, we have our characters, but there has to be room for discovery.”

Del Toro, who worked with Anderson on 2014’s Inherent Vice, says that working with the moviemaker is a dream for any actor.

“I think working with Paul is one of those things that any actor would want,” the 58-year-old Sicario star says. “Any actor would love to have a chance to work with Paul and I’m no different.”

Despite missing out on his earlier chance to work with Anderson, DiCaprio’s career has been just fine. He went on to become one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, appearing in Titanic, acting in six movies for director Martin Scorsese and winning a Best Actor Oscar for his role in 2015’s The Revenant.

The collaboration that he regretted didn’t happen 30 years ago, now arrives and comes in what is being hailed as Anderson’s most significant work.

Working on his biggest canvas yet (the film reportedly cost more than $140 million to make), Anderson said he wasn’t daunted by the challenge of packing so many storylines into his politically charged film.

“I hear the word challenging and it doesn’t compute, thinking about the experience, it was just joy to go to work, and frustrating to go to sleep and exciting to wake up the next day for another day’s work,” he tells journalists. “It was long. So, I suppose I could try to find something challenging about it, but to get to the end of the experience and really feel like we left it all on the playing field is a very satisfying feeling.”

Another Oscar might beckon for some of the film’s stars, and even an elusive statuette for the auteur himself.

But DiCaprio says it’s a movie of our current times, showing the divide between people rooted in the past and others who are looking ahead to the future.

“I’m honoured to be part of a film that’s coming out right at this specific moment in time that says so much but can give people that entertaining experience of seeing it in theatres,” DiCaprio says. “I think people are going to really enjoy it.”

Speaking over Zoom on a recent Wednesday from Los Angeles, DiCaprio and Del Toro talked more in an exclusive interview about their experience making One Battle After Another and how they hope it strikes a chord with audiences.

Leo, I know that you had wanted to work with Mr. Anderson for a long time. Why was One Battle After Another the perfect film for your first team up?

DiCaprio: Because it’s an incredibly entertaining epic that is topical. He’s been writing it, and thinking about it for decades now. The fact that it’s coming out right now, it’s really a mirror for what’s going on in politics and our world and our society. He created these incredibly flawed characters that have different ideologies, but they’re convinced they’re doing the right thing. He made it a satire, which I think was incredibly important. This isn’t a film that is imposing a political belief system. He’s making a satire; he’s making a comedy, filled with action. It’s thought provoking. It’s a film that makes you think, but there’s an emotional undercurrent underneath it all of trying to discover where the humanity is in an incredibly chaotic mixed up world, and he does it in such a hilarious way, too.

Benicio, you have worked with Mr. Anderson once before. What was it like being asked to be a part of this story?

Del Toro: It’s always great to work with a filmmaker that you admire. The thing with Paul is he encourages you to bring yourself into the character. When I did Inherent Vice, it was a smaller part. Here, I have a bigger role. Having the opportunity to work with Leo, also, was a great cherry on the cake.

This is Paul’s most action-packed movie as well. There are some car chase scenes, Benicio, in which you’re behind the wheel and Leo is hanging out the window. What was that like? 

Del Toro:That’s a lot of trust … I knew I had the diamond sitting on the window of the car. I knew I had to be careful. I knew I had to pay attention. I knew I had to be sensei in every sense of the word.

DiCaprio:He’s one of the best damn drivers in the business.

Paul’s working with a lot of big themes here. How did he pitch this to you?

DiCaprio: Many of the movies that I enjoy watching are films that have had a lot of thought put into them. He’s been tinkering around with how to create this story, which is incredibly topical, and how all the characters play out for years. It took him years, and he kept going back to it. Now here we are at this point in time, and he was able to accomplish something that is incredibly satirical and entertaining and action packed and made for a theatrical experience. To me, it was just one of those rare opportunities that doesn’t come along … It’s rare for a film to come out that is in the zeitgeist of what we’re talking about in today’s day and age that is this thought out. A lot of films that want to seem topical come across rushed. This is something Paul put a tremendous amount of thought into and you feel it when you watch the movie. You feel like these characters could exist, and these worlds could exist. 

How about you, Benicio. What was his pitch like to you?

Del Toro: ‘It’s happening baby!’ (laughs). He just said, he had this movie. Leo was already in it. I think I might have been the second one onboard. I didn’t even ask for the script. I said, ‘Sure.’ That’s what happens when you have a filmmaker like Paul Thomas Anderson. We’re both cinephiles. We love movies. We want to be in good movies. So, when a filmmaker like Paul reaches out to you, it’s a gift. I can’t answer it any other way. It’s a no-brainer to say yes, then you deal with the part and the script.

If there’s one theme that you hope resonates after audiences watch One Battle After Another, what would it be?

DiCaprio:The premise of this was based on the Weathermen of the late 1960s; people who were speaking out; people who were speaking out on civil rights, Vietnam, imperialism, capitalism. So, what if that was put into a modern context? How in the day and age that we’re in, how do we communicate any more? There’s so much disagreement, and Paul’s just holding a mirror up to society … But at the heart of this movie, you have characters that have a humanity to them. They’re just trying to do the right thing. They’re just trying to reconnect with their family and create family. He’s able to tackle these complex issues, but it’s the humanity in these characters. They feel like real people and it’s very relatable to mass audiences. I just hope that people will go out and see it because it’s a truly original concept by a filmmaker that’s trying to do something different.

One Battle After Another opens in theatres Sept. 26.

mdaniell@postmedia.com