“An Anti-Fascist Film at a Fascist Second.” This headline from a overview of Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After One other captures the movie’s resonance with modern America, pointing to its well timed themes.

Nonetheless, as many critics have noticed, the movie is considerably elusive concerning the present state of affairs. In a single standout comedic scene, Leonardo DiCaprio portrays Bob Ferguson, a stoner and former revolutionary, who amusingly struggles to reply the easy query, “What time is it?” His incapacity to reply exemplifies the movie’s ambiguous temporal setting.

One Battle After One other opens in a well-recognized, but dystopian near-future America, already marked by mass migrant detentions. After this prologue, the movie skips 16 years forward to a time that appears acquainted however is, crucially, distinct from our personal. The movie vibrates with the revolutionary power of the Nineteen Sixties—a decade characterised by free love, private liberation, and political violence.

The prologue introduces us to Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), a black chief of the armed revolutionary group French 75. For Perfidia, political violence carries a visceral sexual cost; she seeks to interact intimately along with her companion, Bob Ferguson, at the same time as explosions erupt above them. Whereas her political motivations could appear murky, her fervent dedication to freedom is plain.

In a scene harking back to acquainted Nineteen Sixties headlines, the French 75 rob a financial institution to finance their trigger. The theft unfolds with a aptitude for high-style efficiency, till the second photographs are fired. The revolutionaries shun masks or disguises, and one member (Shayna McHayle), atop the tellers’ counter in thigh-high boots, proclaims, “My title is Jungle Pussy!” Whereas stunning and humorous, the battle cry lacks the load of revolutionary fervor, falling wanting “Viva la Revolucion!”

A defining picture of Perfidia depicts her exuberantly taking goal follow in a discipline, firing at imagined ideological foes—all whereas closely pregnant. This imagery foreshadows the movie’s subsequent act.

Earlier than we attain that time, we encounter Perfidia’s antagonist, Colonel Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn). Whereas Perfidia embodies the spirit of liberation, each private and political, Lockjaw represents an oppressive pressure targeted on confinement. His sexual id is intertwined together with his drive for domination, organising a battle between Perfidia’s revolutionary beliefs and Lockjaw’s repressive agenda.

Lockjaw evokes characters from Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964), the place sexually twisted generals preside over nuclear chaos. He shares a kinship with characters like Normal Jack D. Ripper, obsessive about “treasured bodily fluids,” and Main “King” Kong, who actually rides a nuclear bomb into oblivion.

This unsettling mix of compromised sexuality and authoritarianism seems in different cultural artifacts from the Nineteen Sixties. Movies resembling John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and the works of authors like Norman Mailer and William S. Burroughs additionally illustrate this connection. Influential theorists like Herbert Marcuse and Wilhelm Reich posited that the roots of fascism are deeply entwined with sexual repression.

But halfway by means of One Battle After One other, Perfidia departs, revealing her perception that elevating their new child daughter would impede her quest for self-actualization and political engagement. This marks a big shift within the movie’s sexual politics.

The story reorients round Bob and Willa (Chase Infiniti), their daughter. Now a fugitive, Bob has spent years in hiding, consumed by marijuana and devoid of a companion or profession. His solely goal is to guard Willa. Apparently, he spends almost your complete movie in a bathrobe—an emblem of his incapacity to totally interact with the world and even change his apparel. Willa, like her mom, can be a fighter, however her battle is introspective, specializing in self-mastery—an ascetic strategy to private energy, discovered in solitude as she practices karate.

On this section, the movie depicts an America caught previously, with landlines and telephone cubicles predominating. As a substitute of fuelled burner telephones, revolutionaries depend on shortwave radios and a wierd selfmade system supposed to sign comrades with musical melodies. One among Willa’s pursuers humorously questions if she’s the one American lady with no mobile phone. Depicting his struggles, DiCaprio’s character frantically goals to maintain his 1G telephone charged, navigating between motion scenes whereas dragging alongside a charging cable. In a world of instantaneous communication, his character faces absurd challenges merely making an attempt to make a name.

Whereas these parts could appear schematic, they do not detract from One Battle After One other’s total enjoyment. Nonetheless, they elevate questions on how the movie interprets the present political panorama.

One Battle After One other Takes Refuge

The movie appears to recommend that whereas the liberationist fervor of the Nineteen Sixties was fascinating, it provides little by way of sensible societal group. Perfidia in the end abandons her household and comrades, forsaking a wistful letter on the movie’s conclusion. Ultimately, it’s Bob, the daddy, who manages to guard his daughter, whereas the absent mom longs for house—a poignant illustration of familial bonds amidst chaos.

It’s unlikely anybody mourns the downfall of the revolutionary beliefs showcased in One Battle After One other. The notion that private liberation equates to political freedom feels naive and, from our current vantage, unfeasible. The movie solely resurrects these beliefs to in the end discard them.

Furthermore, linking fascism to sexual repression additionally feels simplistic. Who genuinely believes Donald Trump suffers from sexual repression? Trump, akin to his counterpart Jeffrey Epstein, embodies the liberated spirit of the Nineteen Sixties, albeit stripped of any political essence. The icons of sexual liberation from this period, like Hugh Hefner, contributed to the mass commodification of intercourse, displaying how private freedom can coexist with oppressive social constructions underneath a shallow ethos.

Whereas the political violence of the novel left has pale, the specter of political upheaval stays. The January sixth revolt marks a pivotal second in U.S. historical past, amplified by the Trump administration’s endorsement of its violent strategies. In contrast to previous occasions—such because the Haymarket Riot (1886) or the Tulsa Race Bloodbath (1921)—the occasions of January sixth have been witnessed reside by almost each grownup American.

This shared expertise has unearthed a troubling actuality: no consensus exists on what was seen that day.

In right this moment’s America, revolutions are more likely to be each televised and live-streamed, but the true battle is a steady battle waged throughout numerous screens over interpretations of shared historic moments.

If Paul Thomas Anderson is a step behind, maybe all of us are.