Producers: Paul Thomas Anderson, Sara Murphy and Adam Somner   Director: Paul Thomas Anderson  Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson    Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Chase Infiniti, Teyana Taylor, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, D.W. Moffett, Paul Grimstad, Tony Goldwyn, Wood Harris, Shayna McHayle, John Hoogenakker, James Downey, Eric Schweig, Alana Haim, Starletta DuPois and Kevin Tighe    Distributor: Warner Bros.

Grade: A-

Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” a loose reworking of Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel “Vineland,” can be described as Jeffersonian, if you remember what that founding father said about revolutions.  At once contemporary and timeless and teetering on the edge that divides farce from tragedy, it’s a whirlwind of comedy, action and thriller that carries you along like a roller-coaster that persistently threatens to go off the rails but remains grounded in human feeling.

The film begins with a half-hour prologue set in what certainly appears to be the present but evokes memories of the 1960s.  A revolutionary group calling itself French 1975, led by the ferocious Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), attacks an immigrant detention center and frees the detainees.  In the process she humiliates its commanding officer Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), a seething martinet who responds to the experience by lusting after her, a desire that leads him to track her down as the group’s string of bombings and robberies continues.  The pursuit ends in a mutually intense one-night stand though Perfidia is involved with French 1975’s nebbishy explosives expert Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio).  She soon gives birth to a daughter, but is captured while undertaking another mission.  Under Lockjaw’s control she sells out her confederates before escaping to Mexico, becoming little more than a memory and leaving Bob to raise the child he believes to be his.

Skipping ahead sixteen years, the film turns into what amounts to a two-hour chase punctuated by occasional quieter, if no less fraught, scenes.  Bob’s a wreck, an alcoholic, weed-addicted burn-out who hangs around the crummy house he shares with his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) outside a so-called sanctuary city, Bakton Cross.  He’s snoozes in a ratty bathrobe all day, but he’s obsessively protective of Willa, whose friends he interrogates insistently before letting them drive her to a dance and whom he doesn’t even allow to have a phone.  Of course the girl chafes under his strictures. 

Danger arrives in the person of Lockjaw, who’s intent on eliminating any hint of past problems in his life after he’s been approached by Virgil Throckmorton (Tony Goldwyn) and Sandy Irvine (James Downey), bigwigs in a white nationalist group called The Christmas Adventurers, to joint their wealthy, powerful outfit—provided he has no “impure” skeletons in his closet.  Desperate to tidy up any loose ends, he launches a coordinated police-and-military assault on Bakton Cross.  Bob escapes the house via a tunnel and seeks help from Sergio St. Carlos, the unflappable sensei of the local martial arts dojo who runs an underground railroad for immigrants, in locating Willa, who’s been spirited away by Deandra (Regina Hall), a longtime French 75 activist, and taken to a odd nunnery run by a group called the Sisters of the Brave Beaver that serves as a rendezvous point in emergencies.

There’s a problem, however: the addled Ferguson has forgotten the code that would allow his contact to give him the rendezvous location, prompting a series of telephone calls in which DiCaprio does comically hysterical riffs that end only when another of his former revolutionary comrades (Wood Harris) intervenes.  That sends Bob, after a series of misadventures, to the nunnery, but by then Lockjaw has gotten there as well, thanks to information provided by another erstwhile revolutionary (Paul Grimstad), and has taken Willa prisoner with a definitely nefarious purpose in mind. 

By then, however, there’s another player in the mix: Tim (John Hoogenakker), a cool assassin sent by the Christmas Adventurers, spurred on by their sinister, cadaverous leader Roy More (Kevin Tighe—is the character’s name inspired by Alabama politician Roy Moore?), to manage the mess.  He, Bob, Willa and Lockjaw converge in a car chase filmed spectacularly by Anderson and his co-cinematographer Michael Bauman on the asphalt undulations of Southern California’s Highway 78.  Only a recognition code inspired by CBS’ hayseed sitcoms of the sixties ensures a happy outcome.  But a postscript centered on the Christmas Adventurers and Lockjaw adds a supremely creepy note, and Willa’s embrace of her mother’s passionate mission italicizes the “another” of the title.

Anderson is courting controversy here, and so is Warner Bros. (one doubts that a film like this could be made if the studio is swallowed up in Larry Ellison’s expanding media universe); moviegoers have little difficulty enjoying movies about dystopias if they’re fantastical, but the fascist vibe portrayed here hits uncomfortably close to home, and parsing out heroes and villains will make some partisans very uneasy. 

What’s undeniable is the quality of the filmmaking.  After the prologue, in which Anderson has some trouble with the tone, he hits his stride; he, Bauman and editor Andy Jurgensen keep things spinning along, and balance the loopily comic, darkly satirical, harshly dramatic and action elements with uncanny skill.  Katie Byron’s production design, from the Adventurers’ coolly rich environs to the grubby locales of those at the opposite end of the wealth spectrum, and Colleen Atwood’s costumes, which cover a similar range, are perfectly chosen.  And special mention must be made of Jonny Greenwood’s staccato score, with its rhythmic piano and snare-drum explosions that add energy and intensity throughout.

As to the acting, it varies from wildly over-the-top to slyly understated.  Infiniti and Hoogenakker are among the most restrained members of the ensemble, while Taylor and Shayna McHayle, as another member of the French 1975, are the most gonzo of the bunch.  Del Toro exudes an irresistible impishness that can’r help but charm, while others in lesser roles are content to play things relatively straight.

That leaves DiCaprio and Penn, and both are outstanding.  DiCaprio is loose and uninhibited, both when playing the boozed-out washout and the energized father.  But it’s Penn who leaves the most powerful impression, not least for the ramrod stiff military posture he affects throughout.  But his expressions provide evidence of his inner turmoil; he uses his facial muscles as brilliantly as George C. Scott did in “Dr. Strangelove,” but to glowering rather than absurd effect, and when at the end he offers an explanation of his long-past conduct to his Adventurers judges, he comes up with nonsense that rivals the stuff Sterling Hayden spouted as Jack D. Ripper in that film.  But as ridiculous as Lockjaw is, in Penn’s hands he’s also genuinely terrifying, as well as—especially in his last scene—pathetic.  It’s one of his great performances, and one shouldn’t be surprised if there’s an Oscar in his future.

Anderson’s had his ups and downs over the years, but his films have always been ambitious in the best sense, and with “One Battle After Another” he’s working at the highest level.  It’s great to experience an American studio film that takes risks both narrative and technical, and succeeds so well—a real rarity in this day and age.  One can only hope that the political climate the film depicts won’t prevent others like it from being made.  

Producers: Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe and Tim Cole   Director: Rungano Nyoni    Screenplay: Rungano Nyoni   Cast:  Susan Chardy, Elizabeth Chisela, Esther Singini, Henry B.J. Phiri, Norah Mwansa, Doris Naulapwa, Gillian Sakala, Carol Natasha Mwale, Loveness Nakwiza, Bwalya Chipampata, Roy Chisha, Blessings Bhamjee and Malita Mulenga   Distributor: A24

Grade: A-

Quietly simmering rage, coupled with sad resignation, suffuses Rungano Nyoni’s brilliant film about a death in the family that unearths revelations of past abuse.  But “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” goes beyond domestic tragedy to indict an entire society that codifies gender inequality and fosters the mistreatment of women.

The setting in contemporary Zambia, where Shula (Susan Chardy), recently returned from abroad, is driving home still in the outfit she donned for a costume party—a puffy suit made from a what looks like an inflated garbage bag and a headdress made of a sparkling silver helmet and dark sunglasses.  It makes her look like an alien, which she perhaps is.

Suddenly she’s taken aback and stops.  She’s noticed a body in the road and goes out to inspect it.  It’s her Uncle Fred (Roy Chisha), and after verifying that she goes back to the car and ponders.  She phones her father (Henry B.J. Phiri), who’s partying and offers worthless promises to help—closing with a request for money. She’s visited by an apparition of her younger self (Blessings Bhamjee) and by her drunken cousin Nsansa (Elizabeth Chisela), who notes that Fred seems to have dropped dead after patronizing a nearby brothel. Then they call the police to collect the body, though a scarcity of cars will delay the process.

It’s revealed that Shula and Nsansa were both sexually abused by Fred as children, and so was their younger cousin Bupe (Esther Singini), a college student who attempts suicide after making a cellphone recording accusing him of having done so.  This does not seem to come as a shock to anyone in the family.

Instead they concentrate on the necessities of the funeral, an event performed in a ritualistic form Nyoni depicts with almost agonizing precision.  The work involved is, as seems the case with all effort required in the society, left to the women, who must prepare for the descent of the extended family by making the house of Shula’s mother (Doris Naulapwa) ready for the onslaught, bringing in mattresses for the women and hauling in the food necessary to feed the crowd.  Naulapwa and those who play Shula’s aunts (Gillian Sakala, Carol Natasha Mwale, Loveness Nakwiza and Bwalya Chipampata) castigate her for failing to make an appropriate show of sadness over Fred’s demise.  They also encourage her and her cousins to keep word of Fred’s abuse to themselves.

That culture of silence, along with a presumption of female submissiveness, is even more apparent among the men seated outside.  One of the most scathing scenes in that regard comes when Shula’s trying desperately to search for Bupe, concerned she might harm herself.  But she’s interrupted by “uncles” who quietly but firmly ask her to get food for them, going so far as to specify exactly what they want.

The treatment of Shula, Nsansa and Bupe is mild, however, compared to that afforded to Chichi (Norah Mwansa), Fred’s much younger widow, who arrives, crawling on the floor in the requisite fashion.  Shula had already gone to Fred’s house to see her, and been appalled by the brood of children he left behind and the pleas of the widow’s grandmother (Malita Mulenga) for them all not to be tossed out of the place by the dead man’s family.  Now Chichi is shunned and berated for not having cared properly for her husband, accused in effect of being responsible for his death.  At a conference between the two families held as part of the funeral, Chichi tearfully describes Fred’s treatment of his family and his refusal to stop drinking and eat reasonably, but the dead man’s sisters are unmoved; and despite efforts by Chichi’s male relatives to make amends, Fred’s relatives insist that she should receive nothing from what must have been a meager estate.

What follows is a hallucinatory protest that links up with a recollection from Shula’s childhood about the unique role that the tiny guinea fowl has among native creatures in warning about predators in their midst.  It’s a closing image that some may criticize as too heavy a metaphor, but it gives Nyoni’s rueful message about the land of her birth a particularly trenchant impact.

With dialogue that’s predominantly in Bemba but frequently shits into English, this is in every respect a remarkably powerful film, deeply moving yet with surprising shafts of dark humor. The performance by Chardy is exceptional in its nuance, and while Chisela and Singini have more limited scope, they too bring their traumatized characters to vivid life.  The rest of the cast are utterly committed.  So too are the technical crew, who under Nyoni’s inspired direction create an atmosphere that’s incredibly specific in its details yet somehow universal as well.  The production design (Malin Lindholm) and costumes (Estelle Don Banda) bring an encompassing sense of place and David Gallego’s cinematography a feeling of claustrophobic intensity, while Nathan Nugent’s editing juggles the shifts from hyperrealism to surrealism dexterously and Lucrecia Dalt provides a spare, unobtrusive score.

Some will argue that Nyoni’s use of metaphor can be heavy-handed, but if that’s so, it’s a minor flaw.  The year is young, but it’s a certainty that when it closes this extraordinary film about trauma suppressed by familial and societal demands will be among its best.