3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): One Battle After Another

2025, Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia) -- download

A few times, I have thought about doing this, balked, but I guess I am. I am starting this stub before I even finish watching the movie. Primarily because I hit the "record scratch" American Christmas Club scene of the movie and felt the sudden tonal shift tangibly, and I had to read (more) about the movie even before seeing the movie completely.

Of note, this was the last of the started-but-not-finished movies I mentioned.

In your post Kent, you mentioned a ... physical zine. Startling suggestion. Intriguing. How would that work? Become some sort of "French 75" of film writing, leaving guerilla style print outs in random spots around the city? Stacks of them on the window sills of 24 hr launderettes and health food stores? Smuggle them into OCAD ?

I guess that would make me Bob.

What an odd little/big fucking movie.

The novel Vineland, from 1990 by Thomas Pynchon, from which this movie is adapted, is also an odd little/big fucking novel. It tells a tale of the 80s and a break-away hippie/dope fiend "country" in Southern California called "The Peoples Republic of Rock n Roll", in particular the tale of Frenesi Gates who betrays the movement because of her unnatural attraction to fascist military leader Brock Vond. Its one of these infamous "American novels" that is imaginative, evocative, political and divisive and very very assured of its self-importance. Seems right down PTA's alley.

Its center message of a properly violent fight against a fascistic government was perfect for current times. Kent opened by talking about the Google Reviews and his assumption that the MAGA Heads would be down-voting the movie in competition with the Intellectual Elitists who would love this movie. My thought is that this movie was so far outside the scope of even the right-wing bot machine (its too long and thoughtful) that they don't know it existed. We didn't even get a Truth Social non-sensical post from Cheeto himself. For me, this just says that the politics down south are not really about politics, and more about the control of the people through pointed choice of outrage vs lunacy.

It did pretty well on RT, garnering a 94/85 and that makes it fully in the eye of the Liberal Elite machine, except I doubt many will see the full spectrum of political commentary considering how dismissive it is of the Antifa Warriors the movie depicts. They are not the most effective, nor well-organized, and have their reactionary heads so far up their drug-addled asses they cannot accomplish much. But at least that is more than the current Lefties IRL are doing, which is being nervously complacent and impotent.

Though, I remind myself, everything I know about the situation in the US right now is based upon what the media and the Internet itself is telling me, and that's never the Whole Truth. And I am as complacent as those I complain about, never doing the deeper dives necessary to see what is going on.

I am not going to do my oft long winded recap but suffice to know the plot is about a revolutionary group that calls themselves the French 75. I am sure that connects to something IRL, but I never bothered looking it up. They raid the encampments of border detention centres, releasing those interned. And they rob banks, violently and flagrantly, to raise funds for their movement. They are outrageous and self-congratulatory. "Ghetto" Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio, Don't Look Up) and Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor, The Book of Clarence) are the power couple at the front of the movement, that is, until Perfidia becomes the obsession of military leader Steven J Lockjaw (Sean Penn, The Gunman), and is in turn, perversely thrilled by the power she has over this "powerful" man. She betrays the movement, getting a bunch of them killed and incarcerated. Also, she gets pregnant from Lockjaw. Her final act is to abandon her newborn.

Sixteen years later Pat is Bob and the child is Willa (Chase Infiniti, Presumed Innocent) and they live somewhere small town, rural, in the trees of Northern California. Lockjaw wishes to join some weird Right Wing White Supremacist group that calls themselves the Christmas Adventurers Club (they are "saving Xmas") but in order to do so, he has to wipe clean any reminders of the affair he had with Perfidia, a black woman. So he tracks Bob & Willa down, concocts a reason to raid their town and tries to the kill the pair.

It took me a while to catch on that this movie was less political drama & thriller, and more comedy & farce. Yeah yeah, I know, but these days I am more immersed in the genres where the story telling is less subtle. That was the record-scratch I mentioned above, and it was further solidified by Bob being completely incapable of being "activated" because over the sixteen years he has spent being Bob, he has forgotten all the code phrases and passwords, which are unnecessarily complicated.

But its also so very precisely crafted, as I understand PTA to be, but honestly, I don't have the actual knowledge to back it up. I mean, other than Magnolia and Punch Drunk Love, being the career making movies I know of, the only one of his I saw was Inherent Vice. Even then, I knew him to be a film-viewers film maker, and I am just Not That Guy anymore. And its all over this movie, from the odd, quirky characters to the filmic flairs like the skateboarders parkouring every jump as they run across the rooftops to the fun rollercoaster car chase where their quarry keeps on disappearing over each hump of the horizon. I enjoyed myself, giving myself a reprieve from the usual easily-digestible action-thriller I gravitate to these days, giving me something to chew on, to think about, and to be annoyed by, all traits PTA wanted from us viewers.

P.S. None of the standard posters really illicit the tone of this movie, and I guess, as promotional pieces, that is intentional. But it also seems deceptive, telling us this is going to be a terse political action thriller, and I was indeed deceived. But, I believe the above "character poster" says more about the movie than anything else.