Anderson’s 'One Battle After Another' Adapted from Pynchon

Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another is a loose adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland and marks Anderson’s second cinematic engagement with Pynchon after Inherent Vice. The nearly three-hour film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Bob Ferguson (formerly Pat), a washed-up ex-revolutionary hiding with his daughter Willa, with Teyana Taylor as Perfidia, Sean Penn as the menacing Steven J. Lockjaw, and supporting turns from Benicio del Toro and Regina Hall. The electrifying, propulsive action-thriller opens with militant raids scored by Jonny Greenwood and moves between manic set pieces and sudden emotional clarity. Critics have praised it as Anderson’s most urgent and relevant work: a darkly comic, mournful yet hopeful parable about parents and children, fascism and resistance that skewers extremes on both the right and the left. The film deploys provocative, violent, and comic imagery and has prompted many reviewers to call it a radical magnum opus for our moment.