Steely Dan is the key.
Not just the “crackling tube sound” that Bob Ferguson, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, says his friend is trying to achieve, but the way in which Paul Thomas Anderson works the band’s 1972 song “Dirty Work” into his masterpiece, One Battle After Another, our winner for Best Picture at the New York Film Critics Circle.
Anderson has long been known for his skill with a needle drop, but there’s something uniquely heart-stopping about the sound of Donald Fagen crooning ”Times are hard, you’re afraid to pay the fee” as Anderson introduces us to the flushed face of Chase Infiniti’s Willa Ferguson. The sounds of Jonny Greenwood’s slyly epic score have dissipated and Teyana Taylor, as Willa’s mother Perfidia Beverly Hills, intones: “Sixteen years later, the world has changed very little.”
It’s a transition that defines everything that’s great about Anderson’s incredibly loose adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland — playful and at the same time deeply moving in its depiction of fractured family and how the revolutionary spirit hops between generations.
One Battle After Another tells the story of Bob, formerly known as Ghetto Pat, a bombmaker who was part of the group known as the French 75. The first 30 minutes give us his backstory: The love affair between Pat and the unfettered Perfidia, as well as her entanglement with Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw, played with stiff limbs by Sean Penn. But the sublime action truly kicks off when we meet Willa, who is forced to contend with her parents’ past when Lockjaw comes looking for her.
It’s rare that a new movie so quickly feels like an all-time great, but One Battle does. So much of it already feels indelible, like Benicio del Toro’s deeply kind Sensei Sergio explaining how he has had a “few small beers,” or the spectacular car chase through a series of rolling hills.
As timeless as One Battle After Another is, it’s also utterly urgent, a movie full of hope for the future that confronts our upsetting present with anger, humor, and grace.