India, March 16 -- For a film that addresses revolution and adopts a fairly radical outlook towards it - even condoning violence as a means of migrant liberation - Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another, loosely adapted from Thomas Pynchon's postmodern satire Vineland (1990), doesn't engage much with the many contentious issues it raises. Revolution, in Anderson's film, isn't a living, breathing organism deeply embedded in the film's texture but a ghost lurking in the shadows, summoned only to further the plot. Vineland is not only more radical in its critique of fascism, but also explores, via allegory, the many facets of revolution.

In Vineland, Frenisi Gates, a radical filmmaker, betrays her counterculture allies to honour he...