The acclaimed creative partnership between director Paul Thomas Anderson and author Thomas Pynchon has been rekindled. Following his 2015 adaptation of Pynchon’s Inherent Vice, Anderson takes a looser approach with the 1990 novel Vineland, crafting a bizarre and relentless action thriller. The film is driven by a pulpy, comic-book energy and a potent sense of political indignation that never lets up.
The movie explores familiar Anderson-Pynchonian themes of counterculture versus counter-revolution, channeling the paranoid style of American politics into a screwball, farcical resistance. This is all set to a jolting, nerve-shredding score by Jonny Greenwood. At its core, the film diagnoses a dysfunctional father-daughter relationship while simultaneously delivering a serious, relevant critique of America’s secretive ruling class and the insidious normalization of ICE raids, framed as a toxic, Trump-era phenomenon.
Pynchon’s novel imagined the subversive spirit of the 1960s facing a contested sequel in the Reaganite 80s. Anderson updates this conflict, bridging the gap between the final days of the Obama administration and the present, though without explicitly naming movements like MAGA or BLM.
Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Bob, a disheveled revolutionary who becomes even more so in the future, where he is seen panicking in his dressing gown, desperate for a phone charger. He is a member of a heavily armed activist cell that attacks migrant holding centers on the Mexican border. His role is secondary to his more capable comrades, including the formidable Deandra (Regina Hall) and the cerebral Howard (a cameo by composer Paul Grimstad).
Bob is devoted to his partner and the group’s charismatic leader, Perfidia (Teyana Taylor). During an attack on a military compound, Perfidia captures and humiliates the reactionary Colonel Steven Lockjaw, played by Sean Penn with a host of reptilian tics and aggressive mannerisms. Lockjaw’s cartoonish and sinister presence becomes a key driver of the plot, as he is clearly sexually thrilled by his humiliation. A born leader, Perfidia exploits his infatuation to manipulate military opposition, leading to one of the film’s most stunning images: Perfidia, nine months pregnant, deafeningly firing an assault rifle.
Years later, a befuddled Bob is raising a daughter he believes is his. As a single father, he descends further into drugs and alcohol while his 16-year-old, Willa (Chase Infiniti), becomes as smart and focused as her mother, training in martial arts with her sensei (Benicio del Toro). When dark forces from the past re-emerge, Bob’s memory is too fried to recall crucial code words, and Willa is left with unsettling questions about her mother and a paternity mystery involving Bob and Lockjaw.
One Battle After Another is at once serious and nonsensical, exciting and baffling. This tonal fusion creates a dizzying, kinetic energy that is an acquired taste, but an addictive one. The title suggests an unending culture war, staged here as an extreme action movie with superbly choreographed car chases and a hypnotic finale. The central paternity crisis itself may serve as a metaphor for the contested ownership of the American melting-pot dream.
While these ideas may be unfashionable, it only makes the film more compelling. It is a story about dissent, discontent, and the lonely heroism of not fitting in.
- One Battle After Another is out on 25 September in Australia, and on 26 September in the UK and US
