The latest film from writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson (PTA), “One Battle After Another”, hit theaters on Friday, Sept. 26. Adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s postmodern 1990 novel “Vineland” and fused with Anderson’s personal reflections, it appears at first to be another of his meditations on 1970s nostalgia.
Beneath that surface, however, lies a reflection on the failure of revolution, the fatigue of progress, and the terrifying notion of raising a child through political instability.
After years of development, the film’s early screenings generated excitement far beyond the excitement an Anderson film usually garners. With celebrity endorsements by Tony Hawk, the Kelce Brothers and Paige Bueckers and critics lauding it as the best of the decade, expectations were sky-high.
At its core, “One Battle After Another” chronicles the intertwined fates of three lost souls drifting through the wreckage of America’s ideological collapse. Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) are radical lovers and founders of the militant leftist group The French 75, waging war against the U.S. government.
Across decades, Anderson traces the disintegration of their revolution into paranoia, addiction and betrayal, seen through the eyes of their teenage daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti), whom Pat must track down and rescue. Calhoun and Hills’ fiery affair and doomed ideals are haunted by Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), a psychosexually unhinged military officer whose obsession with Perfidia metastasizes into a national crusade.
Anderson frames parenthood not as salvation but as the last tether when ideology has failed—a human connection forged in the ruins of belief. Beneath the film’s bold political backdrop lies a comedy of errors: a past-his-prime, substance-addled revolutionary floundering to rescue his daughter.
As an artist who has aged alongside his audience, Anderson seems to ask: how do you raise a child in an unstable world?
The first act barrels forward with the same revolutionary fervor as its characters: formally audacious, rhythmically jagged, operating like cinema in protest. Editor Andy Jurgensen cuts with fervor, hurling the audience through time and ideology. Yet the chaos is controlled, breathing when necessary and lingering on moments of introspection.
There’s also a deep humor here, one more caustic and self-aware than any PTA film before. Penn’s Lockjaw embodies a grotesque contradiction: he craves the acceptance of the racist institutions he serves while fetishizing the Black women he represses. He’s inept at managing his vices, sabotaging his absurd “higher calling” at the Christmas Adventurers Club, a Saint Nick–worshipping parody of alt-right institutions.
DiCaprio delivers one of his strongest comedic turns, bringing texture to a comically useless protagonist. Taylor provides the film’s heartbeat as Perfidia Beverly Hills, leaving a sprawling shadow across every theme despite limited screentime.
Infiniti holds her own against the surrounding star power, a fierce and captivating debut. Yet even amid this brilliance, Jonny Greenwood’s score shines brightest, each note prodding the frame and heightening the gut-stirring tension of the third-act car chase.
It’s impossible to overstate how deftly Anderson balances tones and themes that should, by all logic, implode: adapting decades-old political commentary while exploring all of America and one fragile father-daughter relationship at once. The result is a film that captures the anxieties of living through political instability while holding faith in human perseverance.
A marvellous marriage of form, text, and theme. 9/10.
