Like Inherent Vice, it's inspired by a novel by Thomas Pynchon, 'Vineland', which is about repression in the US in the 1980s contrasted with the revolutionary spirit of the 1960s - a feeling that is well caught here despite the updating in time. The first thing we see is a group of - what else can you call them? - revolutionaries freeing Mexicans from an internment camp - theirs is a very sixties phenomenon, with code words and a daft revolutionary name, The French 75. (This may link to The Battle of Algiers, which is on TV later, a definite pointer to the story.) 'The Revolution Will Not be Televised' is cited, a 1970 black liberation song by Gil Scott-Heron, from which the passwords 'Green Acres, Beverley Hillbillies, Hooterville Junction' originate.
What is quite weird is what is going on sexually between far Right army officer Sean Penn and Teyana Taylor - though when they meet, their performances are so stunning that it slips into the shade. Anyway it's important in plot terms, as we shall see.
And despite this sixties revolutionary flavour we're very much thinking of Trump's America - the next revolutionary thing they do is to blow up two (empty) court houses as a protest again the overthrow of abortion laws - a very timely piece of writing. And here's the thing - we actually are on the side of the revolutionaries, because it's almost like in Trump's America, what else is there to do? The military secret force which goes in to Mexico to raid a chicken factory and pull students out of a high school dance are like ICE, or the SS, if you want to put it it that way.
So this is all very timely, and doesn't need a plot dissection. It's also quite funny - the opposite of the revolutionaries is an extremely right wing organization called the 'Christmas Adventure Club' who are so appallingly racist that it's quite funny. (Was Anderson a Kubrick fan? There's something about this organization's meeting that is as bizarrely funny as similar scenes in Kubrick films. 'Colonel Lockjaw' sounds like a Dr Strangelove character.) And the 'trackers' that never work.
In fact these two opposite camps very neatly represent the polarization present today, and not just in America, either; there's no middle-of-the-road 'normal' people in it.
But while all this is going on, Anderson manages to achieve that same propulsive force that Magnolia also has - it's partly the way Johnny Greenwood's (and others) music moves it, almost wall-to-wall music. It just gives it this amazing forward motion that you find hard to interrupt.
The main story takes place sixteen years later when Leo Di Caprio has become something of a stoned recluse and worries about his sixteen year old daughter, Chase Infiniti. Vengeful Penn comes back into their lives, and then it turns into a thrilling chase movie, with Benicio del Toro a Zen martial arts teacher who has revolutionary connections.
Certain scenes, like Leo's rooftop escape during which he falls off a building and is tasered, and particularly the climactic car chase with its endless rolling hills, are just stunning cinema. Caught with some beauty by Michael Bauman, unbelievably using old VistaVision cameras, though you have to credit Colin Anderson, the camera / Steadicam operator, and the other members of that huge camera team, that are all part of giving the film its magnificent propulsion. (VistaVision also gives you 8-perf, so a frame of twice the regular size for amazing detail. Actually, they missed a trick there - should have opened with the old VistaVision logo we're so used to seeing at the beginning of Hitch's 50s films.)
The irony of the daughter going off to join in some citizen's protest at the end to Tom Petty's 'American Girl' is not lost on me.
Fabulous performances throughout. Regina Hall, Tony Goldwyn also fabulous as the Christmas assassin.
Edited by Andy Jurgensen (also Licorice PIzza), one of the film's thirteen Oscar nominations.
Also great work from our new favourite make-up lady Heba Thorisdottir. Production design: Florencia Martin.
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