My reading on this is that PTA badly wanted to adapt another Pynchon novel after Inherent Vice (my personal favorite movie of all time), but by the time he got around to it, he felt a greater responsibility to ground the story in a darkly recognizable present as opposed to Vineland’s comically cynical retrospective on the 1960s-1980s. 

I understand the impulse, because there are certain depictions of our current reality in this film that feel deeply necessary to be depicted in the work of someone as lauded and (usually) subtle as PTA. OBAA is easily his most accessible and unambiguous film, and I strongly suspect that he intended it to be, given the 5-fold increase in budget relative to his other work and the recruitment of maybe the biggest household name in Hollywood. 

It’s commendable for PTA to swing for the fences in this way, and he hits some truly high highs here. We get to see him take the reins of a full-fledged action movie and he does not disappoint. The plot zips along with an undeniable kinetic energy as the characters run, drive, and hobble away from encroaching state and para-state violence.

Why then, do I find myself feeling apprehensive to consider this Anderson’s present masterwork, as much of the early critical reception has been eager to declare? As much as I enjoyed and appreciated this movie, I think PTA’s insistence on mapping a Pynchon novel so heavily influenced by its own historical context onto the horrors of the present day may have been a misstep, narratively speaking.

The world that Pynchon satirizes in Vineland simplyno longer exists; there isn’t any present countervailing force to US hegemony as there was during the Reagan era, so the establishment of explicit networks of conspiracy that Pynchon highlighted in the late 20th century have basically automated themselves into the basic functions of the modern surveillance state. No sexually confused colonel need covertly infiltrate any organized revolutionary movements because there aren’t any to infiltrate; you don’t need to explain white supremacy as some smoke-filled backroom cult creation because politicians are currently able to just say those things in the open. The paranoia instilled by the law enforcement, intelligence, and foreign policy institutions of the late 20th century has been replaced by a begrudging indifference to their presence as everyone watches them embark on a perpetually doomed, increasingly violent search for self-justification through their phone screens. To me, this goes beyond what Pynchon was able to brilliantly capture decades ago.

I really enjoyed this movie but to truly capture the zeitgeist PTA needed to be brave enough to say the real truth: everything is stupid and nothing is real!

Watched 9/29/2025