The Revolution WILL Be Televised

This article contains spoilers for One Battle After Another and Andor.

This article is the second part in a two-part series examining cinematic depiction of revolution. Part one detailed the pitfalls into which many recent revolutionary stories have fallen: they demand absolute moral purity in revolutionary characters and they mythologize revolutionary symbolism without giving much attention to the details of how a revolutionary movement actually functions. Such shortcomings can lead to work that is actually counterproductive to revolutionary causes. These works give us comfortable, shallow images of revolution which keep us sated in commercial media instead of spurring us to put down our phones, leave our couches, and pursue real change. They are the fulfillment of the consumerist subsumption of rebellion Gil Scott-Heron lambasted in his 1971 song “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”

But lately, there has been progress towards a more effective revolutionary cinema. This second part of our series, then, will focus on that progress through two recent works: One Battle After Another and Andor. “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” in fact has a major presence in One Battle After Another, and its prominence suggests writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson is aware of the challenge the song poses for revolutionary cinema and is actively striving to meet it. While neither this film nor Andor completely solve such a substantial challenge, they make great strides that represent a welcome shift in popular media’s depiction of revolution. They portray it are far more grounded and complex than the myths we usually get. They depict revolutionary struggle as a product of collective organization, not just a few exceptional individuals. They reject the simplicity of both the morally flawless revolution and the glorious, spontaneous revolution, instead giving a more nuanced account of the struggle against authoritarianism more applicable to the struggles we face in the real world.

At one point in One Battle After Another, our lead character Bob is in his home watching the opening of the 1966 film The Battle of Algiers. Such a film is almost too obvious a reference point; The Battle of Algiers is the godfather of the modern revolutionary film. Every revolutionary film that came later is emulating it to some degree. Its depiction of rebellion, though, is entirely unlike the picture popular cinema would come to adopt. Filmed in a neorealist style on location in Algiers just a handful of years after the events it is based on, the film is too close to real history to do any mythmaking. Its presentation is more akin to a documentary or newsreel with its handheld camera roaming the streets. It depicts meticulously the events of its conflict but does not take sides. It does not shy away from the conflict’s brutality either, showing bombings against civilians committed by both sides and the torture employed by the French. It leaves questions of morality and justice to the audience.