Film Review | Inside-Outside the Revolution

If it’s a P.T. Anderson film, equipped with an armada of guns and rage, we can expect there will be blood. And there is blood in Anderson’s new artful romp, One Battle After Another, but there is also a strange new blood type of gonzo humor and a fluid mash-up of genres and themes. 

Blame Thomas Pynchon, whose layered book Vineland was direct inspiration for the latest project from auteur Anderson, who also brought Pynchon’s psychedelic detective novel Inherent Vice to the screen in 2014. Anderson has reportedly been contemplating making this loosely Vineland-referential film for 20 years. In the world according to Pynchon and sometimes Anderson, the clearest route to storytelling is a twisted and chance-taking one. That chemistry can also be detected, in milder degrees of spiciness, in Anderson’s recent masterworks, Phantom Thread and Licorice Pizza.

Whereas Pynchon’s storyline in Vineland followed, in swerving trajectories, a young woman in the Reagan era tracing her roots as a child of American revolutionaries from the ‘60s, Anderson updates the setting to today. Tapping into present-day Trump-era points of collective angst, Anderson wastes no time in pointing shock and disapproval over mistreatment of immigrants in detention centers, ICE misadventures, white supremacy elitism (with extreme prejudice), and the flagrant use of the military on the American populace.  

Even so, the violent ANTIFA-like tactics of the revolutionary gang in question, the French 75, is treated both with respect and damnation in the film — one of many paradoxes running through the saga. We join the story from the perspective of badass revolutionary Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor, suggesting an update and upgrade on blacksploitation heroines), and her comrade and lover Leonardo DiCaprio as “Ghetto” Pat Calhoun. Sometimes mixing business with pleasure, they are engaged in an armed liberation of a detention center on the U.S.-Mexico border and quickly introduce us to the film’s pivotal villain, the fittingly-named Col. Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn, bringing a creepy intensity and dogged resolve to his role).

Enter the story’s central daughter figure, Charlene (Chase Infiniti), and exit the gun-toting mother turned fugitive. We fast forward to the life-in-hiding of father (or is he?) and daughter in the fictional town of Bakton Cross, California (the film was actually shot in rural parts of Northern California, and El Paso). 

Suddenly, roughly halfway through the film, the grit turns to sly grinning as comic relief flies into the picture, much of it arising from DiCaprio’s scruffy stoner character in a bathrobe, flung into hyper-action by threats to himself and his daughter. 

As usual, Anderson whips up a cinematic feast of sight and sound in motion in his latest. Cinematographer Michael Bauman captures the urgency and also the hints of action film kitsch references, from the rare serene and domestic tranquility scenes to the multiple visceral chase scenes, with guns attached. Of particular note is a wild and woozy car chase on a desert highway, a visual roller coaster of undulating hills and vantage points. 

Anderson also brings along Jonny (Radiohead) Greenwood, supplying yet another fascinating and cliche-free musical score. Amidst the smatterings of tense orchestral cues, Greenwood effectively adorns a protracted chase and siege scene — with the harried, bathrobed DiCaprio in an almost slapstick routine with Benicio Del Toro — with an entrancing and propulsive duet with dissonant piano and subtle drums. You don’t hear stuff like that around Hollywood much. 

All told, One Battle After Another is a fascinating mix of a film, by turns sinister and satirical. Anderson mostly pulls it off, adding up to a certain brute charisma, but occasionally the three-hour film seems long and its meandering tone wears on our patience. Still, the film is another strong entry in the filmography of this great American filmmaker. 

The revolution may not be televised, as Gil Scott-Heron forewarned in his classic pre-rap song, appearing over the end credits, but it does serve as ripe fodder for the deft handiwork of Anderson. The revolution has been committed to film, in full ironic and highly cinematic regalia.

One Battle After Another is currently playing at Metropolitan Theatre’s Camino Real Cinemas. Click here for showtimes.