The work of Thomas Pynchon has always captured the zeitgeist of American culture through the most absurd lens possible, blending the eloquence of writers like Vladimir Nabokov with the gonzo realism of Hunter S. Thompson. Pynchon finds calm in the chaos, a rare talent that Paul Thomas Anderson has repeatedly demonstrated throughout his extensive career, particularly in his more sprawling epics such as Magnolia and There Will Be Blood.
Anderson has adapted Pynchon before, last in 2014’s Inherent Vice, an admirable adaptation of a late-stage effort from the reclusive author. With One Battle After Another, Anderson presents a loose take on Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, which focused on Nixon-era underground activists coping with the realities of Reagan’s America. The overreaches of the DEA have been replaced with ICE, a timely modern touch that doesn’t sacrifice the atmosphere that Pynchon delicately crafted.
Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a somewhat hapless member of a radical far-left group known as the French 75, which uses guerrilla tactics to liberate immigrants and bomb courthouses and politicians’ offices. Bob’s partner, Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) is a natural leader among the French 75, outgoing and relentlessly committed to the cause, a dynamic that puts strain on her relationship with Bob after they have a child.
Perfidia becomes entangled with Col. Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn), who she first captures and teases while he’s in command of an immigrant detention facility. Aroused by her handling of him, Lockjaw becomes infatuated with Perfidia, eventually sleeping with her after he catches her planting a bomb in a courthouse. Lockjaw is being courted by the Christmas Adventures Club, a secret society of powerful white supremacists who take issue with his relationship with Perfidia, who’s eventually captured by the authorities, but escapes a cozy witness protection assignment set up by Lockjaw himself.
Sixteen years later, Bob is retired from his revolutionary days. His daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) takes after her mother, whose past as a rat was kept from her. Willa trains in karate at the dojo of Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro), a softer-spoken member of the French 75.
The film’s primary action is set into motion when the Christmas Adventures Club begins its vetting of Lockjaw, who denies ever having been in an interracial relationship. Lockjaw hires a private investigator to track down Willa, whom he suspects might be his daughter, triggering the safety protocols of the French 75. Long-retired and addicted to substance abuse, Bob struggles with the number of passwords and codes required to engage with his old group, all while trying to protect his daughter and only family.
Anderson’s great triumph is the way he crafts a sweeping odyssey rooted in an intimate crime thriller. It’s a game of cat and mouse that feels like it completely captures the rot of this decrepit nation. Everything wrong with America is somehow encapsulated between an old racist and a middle-aged leftist burnout chasing each other around a tiny West Coast sanctuary city.
DiCaprio is not known for playing bums. Bob is not a hero. He’s not smart. His charm has faded, a sad burnout, left to raise his kid after the love of his life abandoned him. Bob is hardly the driving force of One Battle After Another, but Leo never lets the audience forget why he’s still one of the few legitimate stars left in the business. He’s not playing a particularly interesting or compelling man, and yet DiCaprio still manages to put forth one of the strongest performances of his career.
After the first act, which focuses on Taylor as the center of gravity, Penn and Infiniti provide most of the film’s emotional core. Lockjaw is a despicable scumbag, but Penn works his magic in a way that almost has you feeling sorry for this pathetic nothing of a racist. Lockjaw is a thoroughly Pynchonesque creation, an ugly creature who’s nevertheless quite captivating to watch.
Flanked on all sides by A-list talent, Infiniti makes the film her own. In many ways, she’s a Gen Z rebel without a cause, her DNA full of revolutionary sympathies repressed under the tutelage of a father who desperately wants his daughter to avoid that kind of life. Anyone who’s ever felt the inherent urge to belong to something bigger than themselves can find a kindred spirit in Willa.
The cinematography is simply delicious. Director of photography Michael Bauman did a fabulous job capturing the sprawling Californian landscape. Johnny Greenwood’s score often feels like a metronome guiding Anderson’s epic.
The 162-minute runtime never drags. Perhaps more impressive is the way that Anderson never exhausts his audience through many action sequences that never really let up. There’s almost no downtime in the film. Pynchon’s work is commonly exhausting. Even his shorter works, like The Crying of Lot 49, are complex puzzles bound to tire out their readers. Somehow, Anderson channels his muse perfectly without leaving viewers completely drained in the process.
Perhaps owing to its source material’s age, but Anderson manages to make a political film that feels prescient without being overly steeped in current events. Its subjects are not politically eloquent people. ICE’s overreaches have been an issue in this country since before Vineland was first published in 1990. The film is less an indictment of Trump than a scathing rebuke of everything wrong that’s happened to this nation since Reagan announced it was morning in America, ushering in the “Greed is Good” era that’s never really gone away.
One Battle After Another isn’t just Anderson’s best work since The Master. It’s a vital demonstration of Hollywood filmmaking as legitimate art. Anderson and Pynchon’s fingerprints are all over every minute of this feature, but it feels fresh and potent.
This film is something audiences have been starving for. Anderson isn’t playing safe with right-wing snowflakes, desperate to cancel anyone who dares to call out their bigoted nonsense. Neither does he throw about masturbatory red meat to a liberal audience bound to laugh as fools like Lockjaw.
It’s all Pynchon in a nutshell. It’s crazy. You never know what’s going to happen next, or how the characters will surprise you, but it’s all crafted with such obvious love and attention to detail.
Popular culture under late-stage capitalism is all about giving its audiences less for more. Everything is more expensive, and much of it is worse. Film studios are filling their feed troughs with AI slop that no one with half a brain would enjoy. Capitalism thrives when it’s able to mildly satiate its feeble consumer base, all too content with its substance-free diet.
That’s never been Pynchon’s jam or Anderson’s. Sitting in a movie theater, watching everything play out on a big screen, One Battle After Another reminds us of this medium’s innate ability to move people when studios get out of the way, get over their own egos, and let their talent cook. Anderson’s tour de force is easily one of the best films of the year. The famously reclusive Pynchon would never do an interview to admit it, but it’s hard to believe he’s not smiling somewhere about how beautifully his work came to life.
