New movies take on political issues but offer no easy answers

Andrew Garfield and Julia Roberts co-star in “After the Hunt.”

If you think movies have been suddenly getting “too political” … you haven’t been really watching.

All movies are political, in their own way; to not take a side can be to take one by default. When ’30s filmmakers churned out comedies about zany heiresses (even as Americans were on breadlines), when ’60s studios made movies about carefree teenagers (even as millions were being sent to Vietnam), they were being political, too — just in the most passive, risk-averse way. You don’t need to make a speech to make a point.

I love escapism too, but make no mistake: To be apolitical is to be political.

But today, while modern American cinema is regularly, and rightfully, criticized for ignoring our current difficult times to concentrate on selling simple product — shiny superhero sequels and action-flick franchises — a number of strong and celebrated directors have recently taken on complex, controversial issues.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” dramatizes an undeclared war between violent leftist revolutionaries and right-wing Christian extremists. Luca Guadagnino’s “After the Hunt” provides a hard look at Ivy League academia, race and the #MeToo movement. Kathryn Bigelow’s “A House of Dynamite” focuses on the American military complex, nuclear proliferation and — maybe — nothing less than the end of the world.

If you’re looking for escapism, don’t look for it in these three films.

Yet unlike some of the advocacy cinema we’ve seen before — dutifully by-the-Good-Book sermons from unquestioning Christian filmmakers, strident polemics from more-liberal-than-thou documentarians — even as they look at important issues, these new films are marked by doubt, second thoughts and self-criticism. Although with different topics to tackle, each filmmaker takes a different approach.

Teyana Taylor and Sean Penn in “One Battle After Another.”

• “One Battle After Another” is a sprawling epic about fringe politics. Its left-wing radicals are armed and mostly on the run, in between breaking into detention centers, robbing banks and killing security guards. Their right-wing foes, when they are not conspiring to advance their racist agenda, are busy assassinating activists (and then assassinating the assassins, just to be careful).

The film has drawn fire from conservatives, who have read it as an antifa rallying cry. I think they are taking it too literally. Anderson may have the standard, liberal skepticism about big business — just watch his masterful “There Will Be Blood” again — but he is no Marxist mythologist. One of his radicals is a pothead loser. Another is a shameless egotist who informs on her own comrades in order to evade prison (for a violent crime, by the way, that she definitely committed).

Besides, Anderson’s film is more satire than sermon, marked by deliberately exaggerated situations and silly names. Although inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland,” it owes far more to Terry Southern’s screenplay for Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove.” (Sean Penn’s sexually perverse Col. Lockjaw would have been right at home in that film, as would the desperate attempts of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character to remember a security code.)

What the deliberately fantastical “One Battle” is really about isn’t how each side truly behaves in real life, but how each side perceives the other. Are there racist, Christo-fascist Republicans meeting in secret underground bunkers to orchestrate extra-judicial murders? Are their Democratic opponents nothing more than a gang of violent, drug-addled anarchists who hate America? Call me an optimist, if you like — it would be a first — but I don’t think so.

But as long as each side sees only the irredeemable worst in each other, the conflict — as the film’s very title declares — will never end.

Ayo Edebiri in “After the Hunt.”

• “After the Hunt” is far from politically correct, or predictable. Set at Yale, its story revolves around an accusation of sexual assault, made by a gay Black woman (Ayo Edebiri) against a straight white male (Andrew Garfield). The battle lines are immediately drawn — or would be, if there were any battle to wage. But to his disgust, the white professor doesn’t find anyone on his side, least of all his former lover and current academic rival Alma, played by Julia Roberts.

Was there a rape? Neither his colleagues, nor the audience, can know for sure; whatever happened, happens off-screen. But as Nora Garrett’s script shows, some people don’t need to wait for evidence. After all, doesn’t everyone have his or her own truth these days? “If it’s real to you, it’s real,” Alma declares, trying to calm the distraught young woman. True political solidarity demands unquestioning belief. Faith trumps facts.

But motivation remains, and that’s a tricky thing. Is the accuser trying to get back at a professor who had just accused her of plagiarism? Is Alma initially willing to help her because it means eliminating a competitor? Is the school rushing to placate the daughter of a wealthy donor, and avoid racial unrest? Are its performatively political students simply eager to picket something, anything? (“Don’t you have some obscure protest to be publicly angry at?” Alma finally snaps at one.)

Some — even all — of these could be motivating factors. Of course, none of them address the one question the film refuses to address: Was this woman raped? In some progressive, cancel-culture circles, it suggests, this is a question people ask at their own peril. (Just as the story’s title evokes a fervent search for evildoers, the film’s literal onscreen titles teasingly use the same Windsor Light typography as a Woody Allen movie.)

Just to be clear: The impulsive, violent, rage-filled male professor, played by a swaggering Andrew Garfield, is probably guilty of something. But what? “After the Hunt” lets us decide.

Rebecca Ferguson in “A House of Dynamite.”

• “A House of Dynamite,” written by Noah Oppenheim, is even less inclined to focus on a villain, perhaps because there is none, outside of nuclear weaponry itself. The film begins with an unexpected event — a missile headed towards an American target. Due to mechanical failures and technological glitches, the U.S. government has been unable to identify the aggressor — or to shoot down the incoming rocket.

It will hit America in 15 minutes. What should the president (Idris Elba) do?

Although the story brings back memories of earlier films like “Strangelove” and “Fail Safe,” it is rooted in fact; national security expert W.J. Hennigan recently declared it “so lifelike as to be terrifying.” Even worse, the journey this film’s protagonists are taking is paved with the best intentions. Unlike those earlier, Cold War movies, there are no madmen in uniform here, no vicious ideologues. There is just a diverse, well-trained team of American patriots — from pilots to politicians — working hard to do the right thing.

Even as they know that, whatever they do, millions of Americans will soon be ash.
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These are films that ask questions — some of which may be personal ones the filmmakers are even asking themselves. Guadagnino’s films, for example, have often celebrated a sophisticated, judgement-free sensuality. Some of Anderson’s work has embraced a youthful, adrenaline-fueled irresponsibility. Bigelow’s movies have respectfully acknowledged the selfless dedication of the military — even, as in her “K-19: The Widowmaker,” of our enemies.

But what good is that dedication if it has been to fallible systems and a policy of mutual assured destruction? What is personal freedom worth if it hurts the people around you? Where does an everything-is-permitted philosophy inevitably lead? Those are good things for an artist to think about, and you get the feeling these filmmakers were still thinking about them even as they finished their movies.

“Battle” ends with the war between right and left still in progress; “Dynamite” concludes without a conclusion. And although “After the Hunt” has a “five years later” win-win epilogue, it is consciously staged like a typical Hollywood cop-out. Guadagnino can even be heard, as “Hunt” finishes, yelling “Cut!” — as if to remind us that this is, after all, just a movie, the only place where closure ever really exists.

No, although these films raise thorny political questions, they provide no answers.

They leave that up to us.

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