Image: Warner Bros. Pictures.

Bob Ferguson, formerly known as Ghetto Pat and Rocketman, strains to remember the code sequences drilled into his mind following the dissolution of his revolutionary group, the French 75. He screams brutal and detailed threats of consequences if he isn’t told the location where his daughter, Willa, was taken to secure her against a raid by the same military general who years ago destroyed his unit. He decries the operator, an unseen figure self-identified as Comrade Josh, for having a terrible revolutionary name. He explains that he’s spent the sixteen years since his partner and Willa’s mother turned against the group frying his brain with booze and drugs. He pleads, please, he just wants to know where his daughter is until, finally embracing his position as a middle-aged white person in America, Bob demands to talk to the operator’s supervisor. The hold music kicks in broadcasting the opening lines of another of the group’s code sequences:

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville Junction will no longer be so damn relevant

Much of the backbone of Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another comes from Gil Scott Heron’s satirical Black liberation poem “The Revolution Will Not be Televised.” As a loose adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, One Battle After Another depicts an America where military units headed by White supremacists raid sanctuary cities, arrest anyone suspected of being an immigrant, lock them in cages, and kill all who get in their way. In the previously described sequence, a series of raids ordered against all Mexican-sounding business in the town of Baktan Cross escalates into a stand-off between police and the town’s citizens. The military then releases an agitator armed with a Molotov cocktail into the crowd as provocation for the use of violence against the peaceful protestors. Meanwhile, as Bob screams at Comrade Josh, commanding officer Colonel Steven Lockjaw abusing his military authority to apprehend of Bob’s daughter, which causes another former French 75 member to take her into custody by using the code sequence:

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville Junction

It all feels so damn relevant.

Leonardo DiCaprio has moved into his Dude Lebowski phase.
Image: Warner Bros. Pictures.

Beginning in flashback, One Battle After Another opens with the French 75, including Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his partner Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), raiding an immigrant detention center. As the group ties up the officers and releases the immigrants detained within, Perfidia personally humiliates Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn) before then making her escape to the sounds of a demolitions display orchestrated by Rocketman, all of which excites Perfidia to the point of orgasmic glee. From here, we watch as Pat does everything he can to keep up with Perfidia’s ever-growing demand for more and more violence – issuing direct threats to police departments, blowing up government buildings, knocking out power grids – not knowing that Lockjaw, similarly drawn to violence, is finding just as much pleasure in watching Perfidia’s revolutionary acts and she does in conducting them.

As seeming adversaries, Perfidia and Lockjaw form a perfect allegory for a psychosexual phenomena prevalent in a certain section of American society. As with many so-called powerful men, Lockjaw has a kink for humiliation, both of himself and others. Played with an almost animalistic ferocity and sexuality by Taylor, it’s obvious why someone like Lockjaw would be drawn to Perfidia, the forbidden fruit, as they say, whose own desire for attention forms a sort of joint-fetishization of the other. In allowing the camera to lingering on Perfidia’s curves and lower half, Anderson allows use to infer Lockjaw’s lust: he wants from Perfidia the things he can’t get from white women. Their antagonistic flirtation well captures several of the love-hate relationships which permeate modern society: the bigoted senator with a secret Grindr profile, the anti-trans podcaster with a folder of transgender pornography, or, most relevant, the White supremacist with a secret fetish for Black women. It’s the same dichotomy that has always existed in American society: a country founded on war and division trying to call itself “the United States.”

Meanwhile, in Bob, we see the shallowness of several self-styled revolutionaries. Although committed to the French 75 through crafting the explosives used to carry out their actions, his own relationship with Perfidia makes us doubt how much of Bob’s interest is in the revolution and how much is in his own fetish, a doubt echoed by Perfidia’s own family – questioning whether or not he is a “real revolutionary” – furthered by his admission that he only participates in the opening raid because he “loves Black women,” and solidified by his complete inaction once Perfidia is gone. Without this driving force, Bob becomes a clichéd burnout, spending his day smoking weed in his living room watching movies about revolutions and never changing from a wardrobe straight of The Dude Lebowski’s closet.  Even his well-meaning aspects, asking for Willa’s friend’s preferred pronoun or referring to young Latinos as “homie” and “ese,” come off more as condescension than genuine allyship.

For all its the bombastic events, revolutionary discourse, brutality, and ripped-from-the-headlines imagery, nothing in One Battle After Another is more meaningful than the characters of Bob and Lockjaw.

Someone get this man some spinach!
Image: Warner Bros. Pictures.

Conservative media (meaning, of course, white dudes with podcasts) has already derided the film as being “woke” and “dangerous,” a fantasy that will bring comfort to those of us on the left after their Dear Leader locks us all up. On the flip side, there has been some leftist criticism of Paul Thomas Anderson’s focus on the white characters of the film and of Leonardo DiCaprio in particular, whose environmental activism is undercut by his high-waste celebrity lifestyle. What these criticisms don’t seem to understand however is that One Battle After Another, much like “The Revolution Will Not be Televised,” is a satire. Both Bob and Lockjaw are ridiculous characters. The scene described above of Bob forgetting his code sequence, is as intense as it is absurd. He tries every method possible, from violence to sympathy, to talk his way around a ludicrously detailed set of phrases that he hasn’t uttered in an entire lifetime, only for the conversation to go absolutely nowhere. Meanwhile, Lockjaw enlists several helicopters, provokes a bloody battle in the middle of an American town, and triggers a response from an underground network of revolutionaries, just to advance his own standing with a racist organization.

Bob, as portrayed by DiCaprio, is the typical paranoid former revolutionary, out-of-touch to the point of foolishness, wholly unequipped to handle a modern crisis. He blunders from place to place relying on old contacts and lingering goodwill, spending thirty minutes of runtime trying to charge his antiquated cell phone. At the same time, Anderson and DiCaprio add nuance to the character through the dedication he shows to his daughter and the fact that, beneath the seeming paranoia, he is absolutely correct. His communications are being monitored. Lockjaw, on the other hand, is cartoonishly evil, complete with a Popeye-like sneer and membership to a cabal of White supremacist Christmas Adventurers who greet each other with “Hail St. Nick” (St. Nick of course being an alias of Santa, which is an anagram of Satan). Penn turns in a brilliant physical performance, capturing the rigid expression of an old military vet, even down a near complete lack of movement in the knees. The extent to which these two ridiculous men carry out their longstanding feud, and the danger it brings with it, exemplifies America’s own amplification of idiocy. We are a terrifyingly silly nation, willing to go to war with itself over things as trivial as jeans commercials and who gets to perform at a football game. We do, of course, have myriad real, dire, and consequential issues to address, but so much of our attention is consumed with petty squabbles and pointless “culture wars.” Every day feels like we’re fighting one battle after another over nothing to the point where this film itself is criticized for “glorifying political violence, so soon after the assassination of Charlie Kirk.” Kirk, of course, being a silly and petty racist made important for no reason other than proximity to power. Just like Colonel Lockjaw.

One must always bow to the sensei.
Image: Warner Bros. Pictures.

We’re led to believe that events such as those happening in Baktan Cross are happening all over the country. The French 75 are notorious enough that namedropping the groups gets Bob into even the most secured locations. We’re told that the old white men of the Christmas Adventurers have offices throughout the country and its members never want for wealth, prestige, or power. Yet we don’t see any of this. All we see are two old enemies resuming a grudge over a woman who wants nothing to do with each of them. Like America itself, Bob and Lockjaw assume themselves so important that they drag everyone else around them into their problems. Again, this isn’t to say there aren’t real consequences, but the fact that these two silly men have any influence over anyone, anyone at all, is an indictment against American society. We are too powerful of a country to be run by idiots. And yet here we are.

So damn relevant.

Regina Hall makes everything better.
Image: Warner Bros. Pictures.

Much like its characters, One Battle After Another uses the performance of revolution as pretense. Upon first consideration, imagery of immigration detention centers and military raids make it feel as though Paul Thomas Anderson specifically crafted the film as a response to President Tr*mp’s illegal occupation of American cities. Then you remember that the opening sequence would’ve taken place during the Obama administration and the FBI has been raiding private residences for decades. Revolutionary groups like the French 75 have a long history, from the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground all the way back to the Underground Railroad and the Minutemen. Likewise, old white men have always run America, never more so than after the election of our first and thus far only Black president. Paul Thomas Anderson himself spent twenty years trying to get the film made, with its source material, Vineland, being written in 1980’s about the 1960’s. None of this is new.

Beyond wonderful performances by those mentioned above along with Chase Infiniti, Benicio Del Toro, and Regina Hall, gorgeous cinematography (including an absolutely brilliant closing sequence), and a pace so propulsive that three hours fly by, the true genius of One Battle After Another is in making something as simple as parenthood feel like a revolutionary act. For all his high-minded (so to speak) bluster, Bob’s most important role in society is that of father. In contrast, Lockjaw’s lifetime of dedication to “purity” is undercut by the possibility of a bi-racial lovechild. This isn’t a battle for the soul of a nation. It’s a battle for custody. One Battle After Another isn’t a film about fighting tyranny. It isn’t a glorification of political violence or a treatise on the hypocrisy of White supremacists and/or left wing revolutionaries. It’s a film about fathers and daughters. It’s a wildly entertaining, visceral, intense, equal parts poignant and hilarious film about parenthood and the battles that come with it.

The real issue conservative commentators need to grapple with is why, in a film that never mentions political parties, was completed before the current administration took over, and could’ve come out anytime in the last twenty years, they assume One Battle After Another is specifically against the Tr*mp administration. What is it about this current president that makes them assume any film which depicts revolution against tyranny is pointed at their side?

‘One Battle After Another’ is a stellar film debut for Chase Infiniti.
Image: Warner Bros. Pictures.

In 1971, Gil Scott-Heron used television as a contrast to real action. He makes frequent references to then-popular shows, characters, and even commercials to separate true importance from false. In saying, “Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville Junction will no longer be so damn relevant,” he derides both the idea that the only stories worth telling are those of Southern whites and that television shows have any importance at all. Television is not revolution. It is entertainment. Listening to the poem now, the shows might be outdated, but the message is not.

Maybe One Battle After Another is a response the current rise in American authoritarianism. Maybe Paul Thomas Anderson made the film as catharsis against a tyrannical government or a blueprint for real life left-wing radicalism. Maybe Colonel Lockjaw is an attack on the entire American military and government. Maybe it’s a film that could’ve been release twenty years ago. Or maybe none of these things are true. Maybe this is a screwball drama where the leads are caricatures too ridiculous to ever exist and nothing means anything. But the fact that we have to ask these questions means that One Battle After Another invokes issues that require consideration. And as long as these issues exist, One Battle After Another will remain so damn relevant.

Rating: 4.5 / 5