A Note on "One Battle After Another"

[Prairie Gates]

Last night, One Battle After Another won the Oscar for best Picture, and Paul Thomas Anderson won for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. A note on that last category.

One Battle After Another is a very loose adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's 1990 novel, Vineland. Very loose: Vineland is set in 1984, with the main characters mostly being 1960s radicals and the various police agents who still torment them. In the film, Teyana Taylor plays Perfidia Beverly Hills; in the novel, the character's name is Frenesi Gates: she's described as blond with blue eyes. Like the film, she comes from a long line of radical activists, but they are mainly labor-movement anarchists. The story of her grandparents and great grandfather - a notorious anarchist dynamiter named Webb Traverse who fights the mining interests in late 19th century Colorado - is continued in Pynchon's sprawling but beautiful Against the Day. Leonardo DiCaprio's character (Bob Ferguson) is named Zoyd Wheeler in the book; DiCaprio's portrayal is probably closest to the character in the novel. The daughter of Frenesi Gates and Zoyd Wheeler is named Prairie Wheeler in the novel; she becomes Chase Infiniti's brilliant Willa Ferguson in the film. In the novel she is younger: 14 years-old at the time of the action. The main plot of the novel is Prairie's quest to find her mother, who had left her with her stoner father and gone to ground as the Sixties began unraveling. Like in the movie, Prairie's mother had a bewildering affair with FBI bad guy Brock Vond (Sean Penn's memorable Steven J. Lockjaw in the film), who is now (in 1984) also trying to track the disappeared Frenesi Gates down.

The book is very different and was at first disliked by critics (coming 17 years after Pynchon's masterpiece, Gravity's Rainbow). But it has since become a fan favorite and cult classic. I'm not surprised PTA decided to adapt it; he had already adapted Pynchon's Inherent Vice with Jaoquin Phoenix.

Anyway, Prairie Wheeler (Chase Infiniti's Willa Ferguson) is one of my favorite literary characters. Born in 1970, she is Pynchon's only true Gen X character (OK, fine, maybe Bleeding Edge's Maxine Tarnow). If she had taken her mother's last name instead of her father's, her name would be....

Prairie Gates.

[GusBob]

1. Ok I often wondered the origin of your handle

I used to spend a lot of time on the prairies

There is a store by that name in the dakotas I think

[Prairie Gates]

3. It's shrouded in several layers of misdirection, I must say

[Clouds Passing]

2. Thank you Prairie Gates

[Prairie Gates]

6. Thank you!

[Tommy Carcetti]

4. It was decent movie.

There were movies both inside and outside of the nominated category that I thought were better, IMHO. Train Dreams and Sinners were my personal favorites to win.

But it held my attention. I liked Benecio Del Toro's character and performance a lot.

And it certainly was a much more likeable movie than last year's Anora, for whatever that's worth.

[PatSeg]

5. I loved Train Dreams

It was one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. I haven't watched Sinners yet.

However, One Battle After Another was one of the worst film experiences I've had. It took me three sittings to actually get through it. When I saw it get so much attention during the Golden Globes, I pretty much decided I wasn't even going to bother with the Oscars this year...maybe forever.

I've been watching awards shows all my life and there are always winning movies and performances that I disagree with, but the past two or three years, the selections are pretty disappointing. Sometimes it feels like they are making movies for one another, not for the viewing public. Meanwhile, being an Oscar winning movie doesn't seem to have the positive impact it used to.

[Johnny2X2X]

7. I didn't enjoy it

But still thought it was well made with great performances.

And the screen play was written in a way to make light of today's current situation where both sides see the other as extremists. The evil of Lockjaw and his goons, vs the total lawlessness of the resistance.

[leftstreet]

8. The only "revolutionary" was the sensei

Directly working with and for the people the "revolutionaries" claim they're championing. Building networks of aid for food, shelter, care and hope

[Prairie Gates]

9. That's a good reading

Vineland was criticized early for being very sentimental: it ends with a grand family reunion that sounds a lot like "building networks of aid for food, shelter, care and hope." Subsequent Pynchon books took up a similar theme of community and hope. I think we might view PTA's portrayal of Sensei as attempting to capture Pynchon's focus on community filmically.

Vineland famously represents the destruction of a revolutionary occupation (the People's Republic of Rock n Roll) just as Against the Day represents the attack on the Ludlow Tent Colony. There's something to your reading, in other words.