One Battle After Another, the latest film by Paul Thomas Anderson, is a critical darling, picking up numerous award nominations — and, on Sunday, four big wins at the Golden Globes. Loosely adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, it follows the crumbs of a revolution and the fallout of an activist squad known as the French 75, after member Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) gets arrested and rats out other members to avoid prison time. Her husband, formally known as “Ghetto” Pat and now disguised as Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio), and their child Willa (Chase Infiniti), must hightail it to California to avoid the government strongarm of Colonel Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn).
Bucking the consensus, film critic Jason England was not convinced by the film’s political and emotional content. In his discerning review for Defector, England argues that One Battle After Another lacks the heart and soul required of texts seemingly devoted to political revolt, a spectacle synonymous with many left-leaning signposts that rely on performances of politics, rather than action.
His piece received substantial attention, most disputing England’s argument, but it was not the discourse that spurred my conversation with England. At the tail end of his review, England brings up Iowa City…