You say you want a revolution?

Call him Bob. A former member of American anti-fascist group French 75, played by Leo DiCaprio in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, Bob’s now a bit longer in the tooth and looser in the brain, and finds it difficult to recall the series of code words needed to get a phone assist from his former network of resistance fighters.

Watch Bob fumble to answer the code prompt “What time is it?” for the 10th time, as his daughter (newcomer Chase Infiniti) is abducted by diabolical right-wing nut Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw, played by Sean Penn. Bob’s fuse has run out and he’s exploding into a payphone while wearing ridiculous sunglasses and a tattered bathrobe. Very Lebowski.

Anderson returns to Thomas Pynchon for this epic comedy thriller that takes on antifa and a current war on US soil against immigrants, drawing loosely from the novel Vineland. (It’s the second time Anderson has translated Pynchon to film, with 2014’s Inherent Vice also featuring a stoned protagonist, played by Joaquin Phoenix, tracking down a missing woman.)

It’s hard not to like One Battle After Another, with its cadre of freedom fighters led by badass Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) and her husband Bob, the lovestruck bomb maker who gets stuck with a baby girl to raise when Perfidia cops out and vanishes. Funny names aside (Lockjaw, Perfidia, Mae West, Virgil Throckmorton), Anderson crafts a rollicking tale that centers around a tense moment in American history: weaponized immigration forces—a tactical upgrade from ICE agents—swarm into “sanctuary cities,” sweeping up Mexican illegals, even as Bob’s friend, karate master Sergio St. Carlos (a pacific Benicio Del Toro), seeks to funnel them to safety through underground tunnels. This is the battle, and as with another recent satiric take on America, Ari Aster’s Eddington, the resistance is shown to be a functioning paramilitary underground, ready to throw bombs and take up arms at the drop of a payphone quarter. 

Perhaps it’s fantasy to believe there is such a well-coordinated “antifa” movement in America, as Aster and Anderson have concocted here, but it’s a fantasy that current US president Donald Trump has taken quite seriously, upgrading antifa to “terrorist organization” status, even though “antifa” is actually a catch-all term for scattered or solo violent protesters—thus making it easier to weaponize the FBI and Justice Department against any, and all, resistance and protest. A witch hunt, if you will.

But regardless, Anderson is here to entertain. DiCaprio’s Bob Ferguson, a wistful, often crabby Gen-Xer bunkered down in weed-induced paranoia, is nonetheless devoted to his daughter’s safety, fearful that his nemesis, Lockjaw, will return to sweep them both into Federal custody. Penn is frightening here, when he’s not being ridiculous. He’s the type of lockjawed patriot whose fondest wish is to be accepted by an absurd White Nationalist cabal, called the Christmas Adventurers club, led by Tony Goldwyn. Yet his silliness is overridden by a steely hatred that surfaces and resurfaces throughout One Battle After Another.

As Bob’s teenage girl Willa, Infiniti is a marvel. And the father-daughter connection is the real driving force that takes you through over two hours of urban assaults, interrogations, political commentary and one great car chase (the insistent single-note piano score by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood helps) to the finish line. The raised fist here at least comes with a smiley face.

Aster’s Eddington, meanwhile, portrays America in the midst of COVID, just as the George Floyd murder sparks riots and #blacklivesmatter protests across the USA. Aster, known for his horror deconstructions, chooses to deconstruct American discourse in Eddington, based in a small New Mexican border town where sheriff Joaquin Phoenix and mayor Pedro Pascal lock horns over a pandemic response. The thing spirals in every direction, revealing an America where everyone is firmly implanted in their own media silo, relying on phones and news scrolls to direct their increasingly hysterical reactions to everything that unfolds. It sounds like satire, but it’s still kind of a horror movie, especially by the midpoint where Phoenix’s somewhat sympathetic but clueless sheriff crosses over into rage and madness.

Enter a drone-striking, Delta Force-style antifa that is ready to pop up anywhere, anytime, with lethal response. A fantastical flourish from Aster? Put it this way: if there was such a crackerjack antifa at work in America, you’d see plenty more evidence of it.

Both Anderson and Aster seem to be sublimating our very muffled desires for #resistance and #change into cinema that is hopeful (in the case of the former) and absurd (the latter), or at least committed to poking fun at what’s going on around us—“poking fun” being another target of the weaponized US government at the moment. (See #JimmyKimmelLive)