On Sept. 28, we had the opportunity to view Paul Thomas Anderson’s new movie “One Battle After Another,” and listen to a panel of experts discuss the movie afterward. One of the points the panel touched on was that the “One Battle After Another” is an adaptation loosely based on Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel “Vineland.” The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Bob Ferguson, a retired revolutionary suffering from overwhelming paranoia trying to raise his daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti), in seclusion, while the United  States falls into disrepair around them.

The movie opens with just enough exposition to build the semi-dystopian America in which the characters live and provide an understanding of each of the main characters. At the beginning of the film, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character goes by the name Pat and is a member of the far-left revolutionary organization the “French 75,” which is implied to be a domestic terrorist group. The very first scene serves as an introduction to a reality, set in America around 2008, that has an obvious resemblance to America in 2025.  In this opening members of the French 75 break immigrants out of a detention center along the Mexican-American border. At the forefront of the group is a woman named Perfidia Beverly Hills, played by Teyanna Taylor. Perfidia is the leader of French 75 and the mother of Pat’s daughter. In the first hour of the film we watch Perfidia go from a brazen leader, to suffering from an identity crisis after becoming a mother. Perfidia’s feelings and lack of control result in more violence and eventually in her shooting a security guard at the bank they attempt to rob. After this she is arrested and agrees to betray the French 75 to go into the witness protection program. Thus, Pat and his infant daughter are forced into hiding and change their names to Bob and Willa Ferguson. 

The antagonist in this film is Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw, played by Sean Penn. We are initially introduced to Lockjaw at the immigration detention center targeted by the French 75. Perfidia holds him at gun point and explicitly humiliates him. From that point forward, Lockjaw develops a sexual obsession  with Perfidia. Alongside the classic villain tropes he displays in the film, Lockjaw exemplifies the fetishization Black women experience from white men while they suffer abuse from them at the same time. This is the first obvious break from “Vineland”. “One Battle After Another” loosely follows the story of “Vineland” but includes race as a driving factor of the story, something not considered in “Vineland.”

Lockjaw’s obsession with Perfidia is reawakened sixteen years later when he is invited to join a white supremist cult of extremely powerful men called “The Christmas Adventurers Club.” For Lockjaw to join he must prove his purity. This means erasing his sexual history with Perfidia Beverly Hills, a Black woman, and disposing of Willa Ferguson, who is potentially his biological daughter. 

Following the film was a panel discussion led by Prof.John Plotz (ENG). The panel included Ethan Warren from the Boston Society of Film Critics and Peter Coviello, an English professor at the University of Illinois Chicago. As an English professor, Coviello’s takes on the film related to how the film compared to “Vineland.” He stated that the film followed the book’s main themes of anti-facism and criticism of the potential for a police state in modern America. Pynchon was influenced by the policing and military systems that existed in America at the time of the book’s publishing in 1990, yet these same systems still exist today. Coviello believes that the novel takes inspiration from periods of protest in America spanning the late 1960s, 70s and early 80s. He noted that key differences between the novel and the film include the political subplots with immigration and race. 

In “Vineland,” Willa and her mother Perfidia aren’t black and Lockjaw has no mission to “purify” himself. Additionally, while the French 75 in Vineland are a far-left fringe group, they aren’t armed. The film sharply contrasts this portrayal by depicting members of the group inciting violence by bombing buildings as their habitual method of enacting change. Both Coviello and Warren criticized the depiction of the Christmas Adventurers Club, stating that portraying this powerful group of fascists as ridiculous and the butt of the joke doesn’t land well. The outlandishness of The Christmas Adventurers Club doesn’t actually make their group entertaining, but rather makes the film’s heroes seem less powerful and competent. By the film’s end, the Christmas Adventurers remain unharmed and completely anonymous. Bob and Willa never learn of their existence. However, our interpretation of the Christmas Adventurers is that taking fascists as seriously as they take themselves gives them more power, and to revel in their ludicrousness reminds us of their incompetence, which takes away their intensity. 

Warren unfortunately believes the film to be one of Paul Thomas Anderson’s weaker works. He did note, however, that this is one of Anderson’s first films set in the 21st century and it incorporates the modern American political culture beautifully into a film that, while not set in modern America, is a commentary on it. He acknowledges the fact that the world of “One Battle After Another” could very well be the one we are living in now and recognizes the classic Paul Thomas Anderson tropes that made their way into this film. The unreliable mother figure is embodied by Perfidia through her betrayal early in the film which results in her physical absence, though her presence still haunts Bob, Willa and Lockjaw. Bob and Lockjaw, the two leading men, exist as foils of each other, representing opposite ends of many spectrums, from political affiliation to the way they dress. For instance, Bob spends the majority of the film in a bathrobe,  and Lockjaw is seen only in suits and military uniforms. Finally, of course, the story revolves around Bob and Willa as father and daughter. Unfortunately, Warren saw the film as overtly pessimistic and describes the true nature of the film as a power struggle between people who have naturally benefited from the systems in place and people with strong enough willpower to make these societal systems absolute. Warren believes the film’s attempt to engage with anti-facism as an overall message was poorly done and sidesteps the politics of the story for too much of a familial highlight. 

Overall, the film highlights the fascism found within our American state today, and provides a powerful depiction of the racism that remains an enduring aspect of our government. The existence of men like Lockjaw and the members of the Christmas Adventurers Club forces viewers to reconcile the fact that our society is not nearly as evolved and egalitarian as some would like to believe. Through strong protagonists, who are mainly people of color, “One Battle After Another” shines a spotlight on the issues America faces today, including immigration, abortion, racism, sexism and how systems put in place years ago to benefit everyone now only help a very specific kind of person, and how far someone should go to fix that.