Dystopia rules. Or, at the very least, it has recently captured the imagination of many filmmakers. Earlier this year, Ari Aster tried his hand at it with his fascinating mess of a movie, Eddington. Now, Paul Thomas Anderson, the gifted American writer-director who has largely made a career of alienation, redemption and dysfunctional characters and relationships, has crafted one of his most kaleidoscopic narratives to date, and one of the best movies of this year, if not the decade.
For One Battle After Another, his tenth feature, Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood) uses Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland as his point of departure. Because his writing luxuriates in a dense, postmodern realm of drug and pop culture, history, science and generalized alienation and paranoia, Pynchon’s work has long been considered unfilmable. Well, not to Anderson, who adapted Inherent Vice in 2014. In that case, Joaquin Phoenix successfully embodied the “vice” in his portrayal of a drug-fueled private eye, but the storytelling ultimately veered more into the incoherent than the “inherent.” Here, Anderson blends a stellar lead performance from Leonardo DiCaprio, a bevy of well-realized supporting roles, evocative cinematography from Michael Bauman and a brilliant score by Jonny Greenwood.
The ponytailed DiCaprio plays Pat Calhoun-become-Bob Ferguson, a former revolutionary and demolitions expert turned stoner whose partner in the French 75 movement and the bedroom, Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), abandons him and their newborn child for life in a witness protection program. All the while, their nemesis, the seriously uptight Colonel Stephen J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), tries to track down the daughter, whom he believes may have been born of his own decidedly unconventional relationship with Perfidia. (You’ll note that many of the character names are not subtle.) Sixteen years after the tale’s dynamic prologue, Bob finds himself and his resourceful daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti, in her big screen debut) swept from their off-grid existence into a maelstrom of politics, race, xenophobia, moral decay and random human decency, all of it laced with a heady dose of black humor. You may have never associated the phrase "Please hold” with a militant organization before.
In fact, the performances are uniformly strong. DiCaprio, his eternally cherubic face lined with age and angst, becomes the perfect foil for all of the absurdity around him. Bob loves his daughter and embraces the role of father as he drifts into middle age. He still believes in the cause, especially as it involves immigration, but he never seems to have fully grasped the implications of his group’s activity, nor has he ever possessed the discipline of a classic revolutionary. Resignation has taken hold. (As he puts it, “I don’t get mad about anything anymore.”) When all hell truly breaks loose, his shaggy, bemused, bathrobed character morphs into an action anti-hero. If only he could remember the elaborate passwords–radical poet Gil Scott-Heron’s famous “The revolution will not be televised” recurs with regularity–and charge his cellphone. Thank goodness for payphones.
Teyana Taylor (A Thousand and One) offers a star turn as Perfidia. She has the relentless passion and purpose that Bob lacks. She’s highly focused and seriously manipulative, ultimately to her own discredit. Her character evolves substantially through the picture, demonstrating both ferocity and vulnerability, and Taylor perfectly captures that transformation.
Sean Penn as Colonel Lockjaw is all growls, nervous ticks and ugly attitudes. It’s a cartoonish, yet meticulously calibrated performance. You cringe at the way he stiffly lumbers down a hallway, combs his hair and issues nose-to-nose threats. That’s even before you meet the sinister, secretive, white supremacist group known as the Christmas Adventurers Club, which Lockjaw desperately wants to join. “All hail, Saint Nick!,” indeed.
Chase Infiniti (Presumed Innocent) easily holds her own among this high-powered cast. She and DiCaprio have believable chemistry as daughter and father, and her training in dance and kickboxing serves her well in the action scenes.
Enter Benicio Del Toro. As Sergio St. Carlos, the proprietor of the martial arts academy attended by Willa, his “sensei” exudes calm and control. “Breathe” is his mantra, even as the military invades the residence where he and his family shelter undocumented immigrants. (Freedom, he notes, is “no fear.”) The subsequent escape sequence is exceptionally well directed by Anderson, who loves to constantly shift perspective, at times following the characters POV-style, at other times having his camera out in front, anticipating their arrival in the frame.
Anderson and cinematographer Bauman conceived the picture in IMAX and VistaVision, a high resolution widescreen format ideally suited for the outdoor scenes. The compositions and lighting always serve the pace and action, and the visuals make a climactic multiple car chase on an undulating, rural California highway that much more exhilarating and, by design, disorienting.
Extra special credit goes to Jonny Greenwood, already an Academy Award nominee for Phantom Thread (2017) and The Power of the Dog (2021). The composer for five of Anderson's last six films, he contributes a percussion-centric score replete with edgy piano keys. Instead of relying on Richard Wagner-like themes associated with specific persons or situations, it leans into the disconcerting elements of the story: the existential dread, the tension, the violence, the out-of-left-field, laugh-out-loud moments of humor. The sound mix accentuates the effect, with the music uncommonly loud at times, hushed at others. Greenwood’s work on this project stands alongside multiple Oscar winner Hans Zimmer’s score for F1: The Movie as one of the two best of the year so far.
In his capacity as screenwriter and bona fide “auteur,” Paul Thomas Anderson has adapted Thomas Pynchon’s novel to suit this new century in America. Themes of loyalty, family and love grapple with violence, repression and conspiracy. Strong-willed characters–idealistic, malicious, grotesque, perhaps lost–have to adapt. This narrative universe has complexity, urgency and unpredictability. Escape is clearly an option. So is perseverance. After all, we learn, self-awareness is the key to navigating and surviving one battle after another.
