Anticipation is already building around Leonardo DiCaprio’s next movie release, a crime thriller written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, enтιтled One Battle After Another. While this movie marks the first time that DiCaprio has worked with Anderson, one of the 21st century’s most revered filmmakers, we may get a sense of the character Leo is playing, and what the film will be like, from revisiting one of the director’s previous works. As with his 2014 surreal comedy Inherent Vice, Anderson has adapted One Battle After Another from a Thomas Pynchon novel.
Inherent Vice is laced with sleaze, mind-bending drugs and slapstick comedy, as Anderson explores the darkness within the final days of hippiedom in the 1960s. The movie also marks an experimental turn for the director, as he applies the frightening and surreal themes of his previous movies to the form of a neo-noir detective story. The movie is probably the best reference point we have at this stage for One Battle After Another, which could see Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn playing roles with certain similarities to Joaquin Phoenix’s Doc Sportello in Inherent Vice.
One Battle After Another Will See Leonardo DiCaprio Playing A Thomas Pyncheon Anti-Hero
DiCaprio Is Playing Zoyd Wheeler In Paul Thomas Anderson’s New Movie
As reported by World of Reel, it has now been confirmed via a Writers’ Guild of America filing that Paul Thomas Anderson’s upcoming movie One Battle After Another is based on the Thomas Pynchon novel Vineland. This confirmation means that for the biggest-budget movie of Anderson’s career to date, Leonardo DiCaprio will be playing a version of Vineland’s anti-hero, Zoyd Wheeler, as a leaked fan recording of the actor shooting in-character had previously implied. Meanwhile, it’s highly likely that Sean Penn will be playing federal agent Brock Vond, Wheeler’s arch-nemesis.
Regina Hall also stars in One Battle After Another, as a character based on Zoyd Wheeler’s former lover in Vineland, Frenesi Gates.
In Vineland, Zoyd Wheeler is an unemployed former hippie who finds himself on the run from a drug enforcement agent through an absurd set of circumstances. This role will be entirely new territory for DiCaprio, and watching him portray a character so far removed from much of his previous work is a tantalizing prospect. For guidance on how to play Wheeler, DiCaprio may well have watched how Joaquin Phoenix portrayed Doc Sportello in Paul Thomas Anderson’s previous Pynchon adaptation.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice Is Also Adapted From A Pynchon Novel
The Movie Starring Joaquin Phoenix Was Based On Pynchon’s 2009 Novel Of The Same Name
In Inherent Vice, an underrated 2014 movie version of Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 project by the same name, Joaquin Phoenix’s protagonist, Larry “Doc” Sportello, is a private detective who finds himself embroiled in a murder investigation by the LAPD. Like Zoyd Wheeler, Doc is ostensibly the hero of the story, but it’s not entirely clear which side he – or anyone else, for that matter – is actually on. In some scenes, Doc is the prime suspect in the investigation, whereas in other scenes, he appears to be the one leading it.
Anderson doubles down on Pynchon’s subversion, toying with virtually every neo-noir detective genre trope during the course of Inherent Vice.
Pynchon’s novel subverts our expectations of what a murder detective should be, deliberately blurring the lines between the law and drug-fueled lawlessness, and between power and corruption. Anderson doubles down on this subversion, toying with virtually every neo-noir detective genre trope during the course of his movie. Most films about drug-related murders in the aftermath of the 1960s focus on police crackdowns on criminals and drug smugglers. Here, however, the police, criminals, real estate developers, drug gangs and recreational drug users overlap through the movie’s main character.
Both Inherent Vice & One Battle After Another Are Surreal Comedies About Hippie Culture
Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2014 Movie Is The Best Reference Point For His New One
Despite being a detective, Inherent Vice’s Larry “Doc” Sportello is first and foremost a hippie, who’s deeply embedded in LA’s stagnating hippie culture at the end of the 1960s. Many of the movie’s more surreal moments are a reflection of the sense of confusion and malaise sweeping those living a drug-fueled hippie lifestyle that was becoming stale in the aftermath of Woodstock, and the Summer of Love before it.
Anderson underscores this context with an experimental approach to the camerawork in Inherent Vice. Certain sH๏τs of Joaquin Phoenix’s anti-heroic character are taken from angles designed to unsettle the viewer, and bright, disorientating background colors often bleed into view. We can expect One Battle After Another to reflect these same sentiments about psychedelia via a similar visual aesthetic, through Leonardo DiCaprio’s muddled protagonist Zoyd Wheeler, whose life appears to be one long post-hippie comedown.
Just as Inherent Vice does, the movie will harness Anderson’s signature dark and off-kilter comedy to turn the ideals promised by the 1960s into Wheeler’s living nightmare. On the other hand, Paul Thomas Anderson behind the camera with Leonardo DiCaprio in front of it might just prove to be the dream combination for fans of the director.
