Permanent Revolution

One Battle After Another | Director: Paul Thomas Anderson | Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio del Toro

 IS LEONARDO DICAPRIO’S Bob Ferguson us as we are, our brains fried with too many password requests and way too many gender pronouns, sitting in our pyja­mas all day long, watching The Battle of Algiers on TV, waiting for the revolution to return? Or is he us in the future, wiped clean of all memory after AI-supported conspiracy theo­ries have their way? It is difficult to tell in this epic cross-country GTA meets the republic of insurrections.

Paul Thomas Anderson is not a fan of the straight and simple as he unveils the life of a former revolutionary who blew up things in collaboration with his wife, liberating refugees in detention centres among other things. She’s gone, leaving him a beautiful interracial daughter, Presumed Innocent’s Chase Infiniti, who is bewildered by what has happened to her, as is her father, who is contemplating jumping out of a car window when Sergio St Carlos (Benicio del Toro) tells him, “Think of Tom Cruise.” Ferguson is a subterranean creature, lost in a cannabis cloud and a drunken haze while the world around him collapses. Is the violence real or performative—at one point, after machinegun fire, Ferguson’s lost wife references Scarface’s Tony Montana. Is the desolation apocalyptic or the beginning of a new dysto­pia? Is freedom the absence of fear or the presence of courage? DiCaprio makes us confront the harsh truths of the 2020s.