ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER - “¡Viva la revolución!”

  Mikhail Bakhtin, the great Russian literary critic, wrote that the novel as a literary genre is a series of carnivalesque episodes; essentially an empty bag where anything can be stuffed in. Of course, he was thinking of François Rabelais, a French writer whose novels cemented the framework for the genre. Gargantua and Pantagruel, Rabelais's great work, brings to life the essence of what a medieval carnival must have been like: loud, dirty and infinitely grotesque.  It is no wonder that Thomas Pynchon's novels are often referred to as carnivalesque and Rabelaisian. If Bakhtin theorized that the novel can subvert social norms and hierarchies through humor and chaos, then Pynchon's novel Vineland, the inspiration for One Battle After Another, is a perfect example of Bakhtin's theory. And Paul Thomas Anderson's film takes the theory a step further and adds politics to the stew in its quest to break down society's standards. Let the revolution begin!

With his incredible flair for telling a story with images that linger in one's mind, Anderson fashions a tale of an underground group of violent radicals vent on a quixotic quest to bring down the government. The story of French 75, the name of the group, (and also the name of everybody's favorite drink at "Rick's Café Américain" in the film Casablanca), has been told in VistaVision, the most celebrated of all the widescreen 35mm formats developed in the 1950's. The Searchers, Vertigo and The Ten Commandments are just three of the many films shot in this process -- a quixotic quest to bring families back to the theaters instead of sitting at home watching Milton Berle on that new invention: television. Mr. Anderson's choice to use VistaVision is also a rallying plea for people to get their ass off their streaming-den couches and come back to the place where movies are meant to be seen.

The focus of the story is the love between Bob Ferguson, in an amazingly satisfying performance by Leonardo DiCaprio and Perfidia Beverly Hills, a powerhouse of a performance by Teyana Taylor. They live in their scrappy revolutionary echo chamber, and they are very much in love. Their nemesis comes in the form of Colonel Steven J Lockjaw (an outlandish and utterly remarkable Sean Penn) who is seduced by Perfidia during a raid on a migrant detention center. As Manohla Dargis wrote in her review of the film in the New York Times "Lockjaw will spend the rest of the film trying to reassert his supremacy."

Years pass and Bob is living with his teenage daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti). He has let go of the rebellion and is now a burnout watching TV and smoking weed all day. That is until Col. Lockjaw invades his house in a quest to find Willa and discover who her real father is. This puts Bob on the run once again, this time aided by Sensei Sergio St Carlos (Benicio Del Toro), Willa's martial arts instructor and an underground migrant leader.

Meanwhile Lockjaw has been invited to join the Christmas Adventurers Club (talk about carnivalesque!) a white supremacist organization. During his interview with them he lies about having had sexual relations with a black woman. This lie will result in disastrous consequences for the colonel.

That Bahktin empty bag has been overfilled with so much Pynchon, Vineland and Anderson that a whole lot of intelligent, calculated cinematic explosions will follow!

 A friend reacted to the release of this film by saying "finally a movie worth seeing." I agree, and I'll add that it is worth seeing multiple times. And perhaps in multiple formats, especially if it is playing in VistaVision near you. It is by far the best film of 2025, and it has Oscar potential written all over it. I would not be surprised if we see DiCaprio winning his second Oscar, and Sean Penn his third. Both give fantastic performances.

And for Chrissake, finally give P T Anderson an Oscar!  He so deserves it for this film.