By Sara Bright
There’s a chaotic energy thrumming through Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, a relentless, almost gleeful, unspooling of American anxieties. It is a film that feels less like it was written and more like it was frantically transcribed from the nation’s flickering subconscious. At its centre, Leonardo DiCaprio, as the burnt-out radical Bob, careens through the narrative in a plaid bathrobe and a beanie, a man whose personal storm is about to merge with a much larger, more bewildering national weather front. It’s a performance of exquisite dishevelment, both hilarious and deeply felt. You see the absurdity of his predicament, but you also see the raw, unvarnished fear of a father who has lost his child.
Anderson, a filmmaker long fascinated by the sprawling, messy tapestries of American life, has always been a master of controlled chaos.[1] His films often explore themes of dysfunctional families, alienation, and the desperate search for connection, all rendered in a distinctive visual style marked by constantly moving cameras and long, fluid takes.[1][2] Think of the frantic, coke-fuelled energy of Boogie Nights or the intricate, overlapping narratives of Magnolia.[1] Here, he seems to be channelling that same spirit, but sharpening it to a fine political point. The film is a sprawling, ambitious undertaking that juggles car chases, shadowy militias, and deeply personal betrayals, all while maintaining a remarkable sense of coherence.
The story is nominally inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel, Vineland, a book that similarly grappled with the long, strange hangover of the 1960s counterculture.[3] Pynchon’s work often delves into the tension between individual freedom and government overreach, a theme that Anderson picks up and runs with, updating it for an era of pervasive conspiracy theories and political paranoia.[3][4] Like Pynchon, Anderson has a knack for creating a world that is both deeply strange and unnervingly familiar. There’s a cartoonish quality to some of the character names, a nod to Pynchon’s antic literary style, but the threats they face are deadly serious.
A Journey into the Absurd
The film opens with a jolt, dropping us into the tense, chain-linked world of an immigrant holding centre. A radical group, the French 75, infiltrates the facility, announcing the arrival of a new revolution. Teyana Taylor’s Perfidia Beverly Hills is a standout, a revolutionary whose righteous fury is both compelling and unsettling. Bob, in his younger, more idealistic days, is their explosives expert, and Perfidia’s lover. The film walks a fine line here, acknowledging the legitimacy of their anger without condoning their methods.
It is in these early scenes that we meet the film’s antagonist, the odious Captain Steven Lockjaw, played with a chillingly convincing sliminess by Sean Penn. Lockjaw is a man who embodies the curdled resentment and perverse sense of entitlement that has become a hallmark of a certain kind of modern villainy. His obsession with Perfidia, a Black woman who represents everything he both desires and despises, is a queasy, uncomfortable thread that runs through the film. His later attempt to join a secret society of white supremacists, the Christmas Adventurers Club, is a moment of such staggering hypocrisy that it would be laughable if it weren’t so terrifyingly plausible. Anderson presents this group of wealthy, self-proclaimed “superior human beings” with a satirical edge that is both funny and horrifying.[5]
But the film truly finds its rhythm when it leaps forward sixteen years, landing us in Bob’s cluttered, smoke-filled house. This is where DiCaprio’s comedic timing, an often-underutilised aspect of his talent, comes to the fore.[6][7][8] His Bob is a shambling, goofy figure, a man who has retreated from the world into a haze of drink and old political films. Yet, beneath the slacker exterior, there is a fierce, protective love for his daughter, Willa. Anderson, who can sometimes be a cool, detached filmmaker, allows DiCaprio’s warmth to permeate these scenes, giving the film an emotional core that anchors its more outlandish moments. The way Bob’s eyes, captured in tight close-up, betray his fear for his daughter is a testament to both actor and director’s skill.[9]
The Chase and the Chaos
When Willa is abducted, the film shifts into high gear. Bob’s frantic, fumbling attempts to get help from his old, now-underground radical network are a masterclass in comic desperation. He has, in a moment of sublime, relatable absurdity, forgotten the password. DiCaprio is at his best here, a man untethered, propelled by a singular, desperate need. He enlists the help of Willa’s karate teacher, the stoic and resourceful Sensei, played with a quiet intensity by Benicio del Toro.
What follows is a dizzying, exhilarating car chase through a desolate desert landscape, a sequence that feels like a rollercoaster ride through the very heart of American paranoia. The widescreen VistaVision cinematography gives these scenes an epic, almost mythic quality, a sense of vast, empty spaces where anything can, and probably will, happen. The sight of a military helicopter descending upon a ramshackle desert town is an image of unsettling power, a reminder of the forces that are always lurking just beyond the frame.
The film’s political commentary is woven into the fabric of its narrative, never feeling preachy or didactic.[10] The militia that Lockjaw unleashes on Bob’s town, their fatigues devoid of any official insignia, is a chillingly effective representation of the amorphous, unaccountable nature of modern power. It’s a detail that speaks volumes about the current political climate, where the lines between state and non-state actors can often seem dangerously blurred.
Of course, this is a film that will likely be interpreted in a multitude of ways. Its refusal to offer easy answers or clear-cut heroes and villains is both its greatest strength and, for some, its most frustrating quality. Anderson seems less interested in taking a side than in exploring the messy, contradictory nature of American society itself.[11] He understands that the personal and the political are inextricably linked, that the grand, sweeping narratives of history are ultimately composed of small, intimate human stories.
Perhaps the most striking thing about One Battle After Another is its ability to hold so many disparate tones and ideas in a delicate, precarious balance. It is, at once, a comedy, a thriller, a family drama, and a searing indictment of the current political moment. It’s a film that is both deeply cynical and surprisingly hopeful, a story that acknowledges the darkness of the world while still managing to find moments of grace and connection within it. In the end, it is the image of Bob, a flawed, frightened man in a bathrobe, fighting for the one thing he truly loves, that lingers. It is a portrait of a man, and a nation, on the verge of either collapse or a radical, uncertain new beginning.
