At the start of the second act of One Battle After Another, filmmaker Paul Thomas Andersons dense action thriller about leftist radicals on the run in California, a villainous military man called Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn) gets the call hes been dreaming of: Hes finally landed an admissions meeting with the Christmas Adventurers Club, an invisible group of wealthy white supremacists with untold power in Americas top echelons. Lockjaws deepest fear during the intense and not-so-subtly racist and anti-Semitic interview process is that his secret affair a decade-and-a-half-ago with a Black radical feminist named Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) from the French 75 would be discovered by the all-powerful, all-knowing Christmas Adventurers. If all of the nouns in the above description seem totally absurd, thats because they are, as is the notion of a clandestine hate group greeting each other with, Hail, St. Nick! But these names, which signal both over-the-top satire and dramatization of extreme politics, are some of the small nods and Easter Eggs that Anderson includes in his script for One Battle After Another, which distill the preoccupations of novelist Thomas Pynchon. One of the 20th centurys most lauded authors, who may also be the least read and most misunderstood of the great American writers, Pynchons unifying themes are brought to bear on todays political theater and tested against a unique family and intergenerational dilemma in Andersons action-thriller.

Pynchon references were certainly not part of One Battle After Anothers marketing pitch. But from the films broad themes and the tiny nuances of the script (Leonardo DiCaprios stoner revolutionary shares the nickname Rocketman with Tyrone Slothrop, the hapless hero of Pynchons Gravitys Rainbow), its all there and its undeniable. Theres a lead characters creeping paranoia, a plot driven by nefarious and clandestine powers that be, the encroachment of the past on the present. All are the hallmarks of the authors books, from early works V. and The Crying of Lot 49 through his magnum opus, Gravitys Rainbow, and up to his comeback gumshoe thrillers Inherent Vice and Bleeding Edge.

Blink and youll miss it, but in the films credits is the fact that One Battle After Another is a loose adaptation of inspired by Pynchons Vineland. That 1990 novel not exactly beloved or considered essential Pynchon, but still a rich, wonderful and sometimes weird book is a father-daughter story with flashbacks and a winding narrative thats steeped in the ideas of where exactly the politics of the 1960s had landed by Reagans 1980s. And, for the author who was deemed so impenetrably unreadable by the Pulitzer Advisory Board that no literature prize was handed out in 1973 when Gravitys Rainbow was unanimously voted the winner, Vineland is an accessible, breezy book. And light, at just 385 pages. It also utilizes some of the classic Pynchonian themes of paranoia, radical counterculture politics, generational trauma, the signature uneasy mix of comedy and menace, and the question of how individuals survive within sprawling and oppressive systems.

One Battle After Another marks Andersons second Pynchon adaptation after 2014s Inherent Vice. That film goes to great lengths to stick to the books winding and intricate plot. Kudos to Anderson for that, but audiences were left a little puzzled fair enough for a film where the off-screen narrator has to psychically connect with Joaquin Phoenixs stoned protagonist to move the plot along. With his second swing adapting Pynchon, the writer-director managed to take many of the aforementioned ideas and themes that permeate the authors oeuvre and transplant them into struggles unfolding in a version of our present day.

Realistically, for me, Vineland was going to be hard to adapt, Anderson noted in a recent conversation with Steven Spielberg after a screening around the films release. Instead, I stole the parts that really resonated with me and started putting all these ideas together. With [Pynchons] blessing.

One of the signature devices that he stole for One Battles script and germane to Pynchons work, like The Crying of Lot 49, Gravitys Rainbow, and Vineland, is the suggestion that unseen forcesgovernment agencies, elite cabals, powerful corporations are pulling the strings in America and have been doing so across history. One Battle After Another leans fully into this. As in Pynchons text, the rich white men with the racist secret society in Andersons film are hiding in plain sight and cloaked with absurdity.

Anderson even manages to include the overwhelmingness of Pynchons writing that stylistic flourish the Pulitzer folks didnt much care for in a manner thats both effective and, when you see what hes doing, pretty funny. Conversations among the Christmas Adventurers suggest they have a major role in the world, as their operations seem to have shaped history.

The sense that there is much more than we will ever know about the mechanics of large societal systems, the reasons for history happening as it did (on paper, at least) and who is actually behind the curtain is reflected in the film. Whether or not the film is set in a dystopian version of America is suggested, but never made clear; for example, for dismantling the radical French 75, Penns Lockjaw is seen receiving the not-real Bedford Forrest Medal of Honor, named for the Confederate States Civil War General who became the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Characters whose physical appearance alone begs explanation or demand context appear but are ephemeral, shot dead by a bounty hunter or their monologue is interrupted by a bank heists fatal error; Or in the case of Perfidia Beverly Hills, they vanish completely, as so many Pynchon characters do.

Andersons synthesis of all of these themes, motifs, and silly gags into One Battle After Another, which saw Andersons biggest movie opening ever last month, shows how Pynchons ideas have not only aged well but are more visible and relevant. In an era of polarization, mass surveillance, and authoritarian drift, Pynchons worst fears no longer seem all that fantastical. And Andersons film isnt merely inspired by Vineland he manages to refract it through a contemporary lens and retain Pynchons sense of absurdity, regret, and humor, while keeping his idealism intact.