<\/p>\n
One Battle After Another, the sui generis 162-minute epic that\u2019s now in wide release, is many movies in one. It\u2019s writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s fiendishly inspired riff on postmodern master Thomas Pynchon\u2019s 1990 novel Vineland; it\u2019s a riveting action flick; it\u2019s a hilarious stoner comedy; it\u2019s a treatise on the true purpose of revolutionary politics; and it\u2019s a profoundly moving meditation on parenthood and middle age. You can read about all of this in the rave reviews this film has gotten across the board, many anointing it as the movie of the year (ours is here<\/a>), or in the delightful interviews<\/a> that Anderson and his principal star, Leonardo DiCaprio, have given.<\/p>\n But One Battle After Another is something else, too: a movie that\u2019s powered by music. In a moment when rock<\/a> biopics<\/a>, some better than others, are making bank and packing multiplexes, Anderson offers another, much deeper way of using music on the big screen. Here\u2019s why One Battle After Another is one of the best music movies in recent memory \u2014\u00a0no small feat in a year that already gave us Sinners<\/a>. And beware, there are more spoilers in here than there are strands in DiCaprio\u2019s ponytail.<\/p>\n More from Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n This film\u2019s cast is absolutely packed with musicians. To start with the one you can\u2019t miss, Teyana Taylor<\/strong> gives a dynamite performance in the movie\u2019s opening third as freedom fighter Perfidia Beverly Hills (partner to DiCaprio\u2019s Bob Ferguson, and mother to stunningly talented newcomer Chase Infiniti\u2019s Willa Ferguson). Taylor rose to fame in the 2000s, when she was still in her teens, as the choreographer of Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s \u201cRing the Alarm\u201d<\/a> video; she scored a novelty-ish hit a couple years later with \u201cGoogle Me\u201d<\/a> before beginning a long partnership with a pre-disgrace Kanye West\u2019s G.O.O.D. Music. Her 2018 album K.T.S.E.<\/a> was one of the most notable R&B releases of the past few years, and she released a very good album called Escape Room just this summer. Taylor has shown true A-list charisma across all those projects, and casting her as the magnetic center around which the film revolves even when she\u2019s nowhere to be seen was a masterstroke.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s not all! The supporting cast features three more musicians, each used to great effect as key members of the French 75, the militant group to which Taylor and DiCaprio\u2019s characters belong. R&B trendsetter Dijon<\/strong><\/a>, who has collaborated with Justin Bieber and Mk.gee, plays Talleyrand, the old comrade who comes through for Bob at a crucial (and very funny) moment midway through the film. Shayna McHayle, known to rap fans as New York MC Junglepussy<\/strong><\/a>, plays a revolutionary with that very same nom de guerre; you won\u2019t forget the scene where she participates in a bank robbery, nor the later dialogue concerning her in a conversation among some truly vile white supremacist\/neo-fascist bastards. And Alana Haim<\/strong>, whose band just put out an excellent breakup album called I Quit<\/a>, plays fellow traveler Mae West, whose final scene is among the film\u2019s most effective action sequences.<\/p>\n Anderson has always known how to deploy a song at just the right moment in his films \u2014\u00a0think of Aimee Mann\u2019s \u201cWise Up\u201d in Magnolia, or \u201cSister Christian\u201d in Boogie Nights \u2014 and One Battle is no exception. The scene where Steely Dan<\/strong>\u2019s 1972 song \u201cDirty Work\u201d<\/a> plays as a dazed and defeated Bob tokes up before a parent-teacher conference couldn\u2019t be more perfect. Nor could the one where Sheck Wes<\/strong>\u2019 2017 hit \u201cMo Bamba\u201d<\/a> blares through the gym at a high school dance, or the one where the Shirelles<\/strong>\u2019 1962 single \u201cSoldier Boy\u201d<\/a> soundtracks a freaky scene between Taylor and Sean Penn\u2019s comically uptight military man Steven J. Lockjaw. And if you catch a Spanish-language lyric at one point referencing Teyana Taylor\u2019s character, you\u2019re not mistaken: That\u2019s \u201cPerfidia,\u201d<\/a> a 1939 tune by Mexican songwriter Alberto Dom\u00ednguez<\/strong>. (In a nice touch that Pynchon obsessives will dig, Dom\u00ednguez\u2019s works also include a song titled \u201cFrenesi,\u201d which lent its name to the equivalent character in Vineland.)<\/p>\n A major plot device in One Battle has to do with the elaborate revolutionary passwords that Bob forgets once he goes underground and devotes his life to raising Willa and getting zooted in a big old bathrobe. These aren\u2019t simple one-word skeleton keys \u2014 they\u2019re long, catechistic question-and-answer sequences that French 75 members have to recite together to prove they are who they say they are. There are a bunch of these, but one that we hear again and again, in both comic and dramatic scenes, comes from the lyrics to the radical poet and proto-rapper Gil Scott-Heron\u2019s 1970 classic \u201cThe Revolution Will Not Be Televised\u201d<\/a>: \u201cGreen Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville Junction will no longer be so damn relevant\u2026\u201d It\u2019s a clever callback to a status-quo-challenging moment of the past, and something that any fan of Scott-Heron\u2019s pioneering work will appreciate.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s not ignore this one just because it\u2019s happened before. Five of Anderson\u2019s last six films \u2014 There Will Be Blood, The Master, Inherent Vice, Phantom Thread, and now One Battle After Another \u2014\u00a0have featured original scores by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood. (The one exception, Licorice Pizza, mostly focused on period-accurate Seventies music, but Greenwood also contributed some incidental cues there.) Greenwood has become one of the most celebrated film scorers in Hollywood over that time, and while he\u2019s presumably been busy getting ready for Radiohead\u2019s first tour<\/a> in eight years, he also turned in what might be his best film music yet. His nervous piano keys and synth swells are a big part of what makes One Battle\u2019s nearly-three-hour runtime fly by. He\u2019s there in every knuckle-baring showdown and pulse-racing car chase, heightening the emotions and keeping you locked into this film\u2019s relentlessly paced story. When he rips through the \u201cJust\u201d solo in arenas across Europe in a few weeks, he\u2019ll be taking a well-earned victory lap for what he pulled off in this movie.<\/p>\n Best of Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for RollingStone’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One Battle After Another, the sui generis 162-minute epic that\u2019s now in wide release, is many movies in one. It\u2019s writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s fiendishly inspired riff on postmodern master Thomas Pynchon\u2019s 1990 novel Vineland; it\u2019s a riveting action flick; it\u2019s a hilarious stoner comedy; it\u2019s a treatise on the true purpose of revolutionary politics; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2058180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[366356,344285,349320,23666,333476,383334,352328,357900,383335],"class_list":["post-2058179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-battle","tag-bob-ferguson","tag-jonny-greenwood","tag-leonardo-dicaprio","tag-paul-thomas-anderson","tag-revolutionary-politics","tag-teyana-taylor","tag-thomas-pynchon","tag-willa-ferguson"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/A-Guide-to-the-Revolutionary-Music-in-\u2018One-Battle-After.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2058179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2058179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2058179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2058180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2058179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2058179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2058179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Cast<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The Needle Drops<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The Plot Devices<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The Score<\/strong><\/h2>\n