‘One Battle After Another’ or — High-Speed ‘Vineland’?
Being a big Thomas Pynchon fan, I was curious as to what, if any, similarities there would be between Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘One Battle After Another’ (2025) and its source material, ‘Vineland’. How closely would it mirror the original story and characters? Would the ninjettes make an appearance? And, most importantly of all, would Leonardo DiCaprio launch into a rendition of ‘Wacky Coconuts’*? Hell, would it even resemble the book in the slightest?!
The good news is that ‘One Battle After Another’ is, without a doubt, an undeniable spin on Pynchon’s 1990 novel, although what Anderson has wisely done is strip it down to its central relationship rectangle — an aging stoner hippie fights to protect the daughter he had with a former revolutionary from the clutches of a vindictive U.S. law enforcement agent. It’s unmistakeably Zoyd and Prairie Wheeler, Frenesi Gates and Brock Vond updated from 1984 to contemporary America.
The times might’ve changed but the concerns and issues remain the same — “Then again, it’s the whole Reagan program, isn’t it — — dismantle the New Deal, reverse the effects of World War II, restore fascism at home and around the world, flee into the past, can’t you feel it, all the dangerous childish stupidity — -“ Thomas Pynchon, Vineland.
Anderson’s stroke of genius is to take all this and render it cinematic by transforming it all into a chase movie. And it is, without a doubt, a stroke of genius because of everything I could praise about ‘OBAA’ — the cinematography, production design, political commentary, etc — what left me reeling in an exalted state of ecstatic giddation was its pacing, because this film fucking moves!
After a hand-grenade of an opening first act that simultaneously grips the audience as well as providing everything we need to know about what’s going on its then a clear case of watching a father attempting to rescue his daughter from malevolent forces.
These malevolent forces are the malevolent forces that have always corrupted societies — middle-aged men with power and money. Their fascism is, indeed, a dangerous and childish stupidity: the craving after status; the playacting nature of exclusive and “elite” fraternities; racism; an infantile obsession with Christmas. The threat isn’t, and never has been, immigrants, blue-haired kids, feckless parents, alternative lifestyles, any other human being that isn’t you, but the unbearable shame-driven idiocy of those in control who cannot endure the limitations of their own selves. So, remember — if you find yourself scapegoating a particular minority you’ve fallen into the fascists’ trap of doing their work for them.
Anderson gets what’s happening in America today, so this isn’t an insular movie jerking itself off Tarantino-style on it’s own solipsistic cine-literacy. Its gaze is fixed firmly OUTWARDS, demanding us to look. The effect is invigorating because what we’re seeing is vital and, once again, we feel that sensation of surging motion although, now, it is something stirring within ourselves.
And everything just keeps moving, the film culminating in a car chase over rolling hills that might just be the most astonishing sequence of speed, motion and tension I’ve ever seen.
This isn’t the hazy, weed-permeated, adorable Pynchon of ‘Inherent Vice’s Doc Sportello or ‘Vineland’s Zoyd Wheeler but a warning, a refusal to take things lying down. Blind obedience isn’t patriotic; dissent is. It’s a reminder that your only god-damn moral obligation to your society is to be a massive motherfucking pain in the ass.
Viva la revolución!
*’Wacky Coconuts’
(Hawaiian favourite in the key of G)
Can’t ya hear… them…
(vumm) Uh Wack-ky Coconuts,
(hm) Uh Wack-ky Coconuts,
Thumpin’ in a syn-copated island,
Melodee…
Con-tinuouslee…
Yes one by one those
(vum) Wack-ky Coconuts,
(vum) Wack-ky Coconuts,
Fallin’ on m’ roof like th’ beat of some
Jungle drum… (mm!)
Vum-vum vum!
Why won’t those
Ol’ Wack-ky Coconuts, find some other place?
Why should I remain in Wack-
Ky Coconuts’ embrace? Must be wacky ‘bout
(vum!) Wack-ky Coconuts,
(vum!) Oh, those loco nuts,
They’re the coconuts
For me!
