“Viva la revolució”, shouts Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) with a raised fist, in bad Spanish, approximately two minutes before he falls forty feet because he was too high to successfully jump from roof to roof: a typical scene in One Battle After Another, the latest movie from Paul Thomas Anderson. Released on September 26th, it is a modern take on Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, marking Anderson’s second adaptation of the author’s work. In Vineland, the revolutionaries are hippie stoners who have vague notions of sticking it to the man, more Cheech & Chong than The Battle of Algiers (1966). The revolutionaries in One Battle after Another may still be stoned, but their struggle is more real. Immigration detention centres are omnipresent, cops do not hesitate to shoot at civilians, the military can do whatever it wants, protests are constant, there are secret white supremacist cabals and not-so-secret gangs. In the 35 years since the novel’s release, America has come of age. And so has Bob.
Once a member of the militant French 75 and lover to the feared Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), Bob needs to go into hiding with his daughter, Willa (Chase Infinity in her feature film debut), now that Perfidia has betrayed her comrades and been arrested. Willa has all the presence of mind and strength of will that her father lacks. Danger comes from Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn), an uptight military officer with a secret. Lockjaw kidnaps Willa, and Bob discovers that habitual pot smoking does not bode well for paramilitary fighting. If he is to recuse his daughter, he needs to put himself together. Fortunately for him, his daughter’s karate teacher Sensei (Benicio Del Torro) is there to offer a Zen outlook and supply the much-needed charging port, rifle, and beer.
Another big difference from Pynchon’s novel is the movie’s focus on race, on the struggles of minorities and immigrants under constant threat by the government. Sensei runs an underground railroad network for immigrants and Lockjaw conducts “a drug raid” on a factory that mostly employs immigrants (a member of the Christmas Adventurers club makes a point of noting that he needs them back at work). Anderson goes overboard with absurdity because scenes like this do not necessarily register as anything particularly unusual. The military general needs to have sexual fetishes, there need to be militant stoner nuns, and the white supremacist group must have a funny name; otherwise, the film might have just been a well-made action adaptation of the morning news.
One Battle After Another mixes slapstick with gravity, Looney Tunes aesthetics with fascism, and somehow manages to work it all. The comedy lands, but never at the cost of undermining the real danger. The action is well-executed, and the final car chase is both suspenseful and visually stunning. Performances are also phenomenal, with Chase Infinity easily holding her own with experienced actors like DiCaprio and Penn, whose deadpan portrayal of Lockjaw consistently drew laughs from the entire theater. Jonny Greenwood’s anxious, energetic, overwhelming piano score helps create a paranoia, Bob’s in particular. But as the Catch-22 quote goes: “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.” And indeed, Bob’s door does get knocked down by the military.
Anderson does not attempt to hide which side of the barricades his film stands on. In the opening, when Bob was younger, scenes of targeted bombings are intermixed with clips of Bob and Perfidia having sex. The message is clear: revolution is sexy, violence is a turn-on, and the military is a refuge of repressed, insecure men in shirts too-tight. And despite all the dead, the movie ends on a surprisingly hopeful note, that the kids are all right. Willa might be the most competent character in the movie, and her classmates resist interrogation better than seasoned revolutionaries. One Battle After Another ends by dreaming of a better world that would be possible if one were to lay off the booze, put out the joint, and go to a protest. And if being sober turns out to be too difficult, Bob’s character is a testament to the possibility of multitasking. The revolution will not be televised, but it might just be a little high.
