When Exactly Does One Battle After Another Take Place?

"There's only one concrete fact about time in One Battle After Another at some point, 16 years pass between the film's propulsive first act and the rest. Not much has changed, the activist Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) tells us in voice-over after that time jump, but the world that her ex-partner Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) and their daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti), occupy feels just different enough."

"Vineland, the Thomas Pynchon novel Anderson is loosely riffing on, hinges on the relationship between '60s revolutionaries and '80s yuppies, but One Battle isn't set in the 1980s, either. The film's opening sequence shows the French 75 freeing dozens of migrants who have been detained at the border. That's a relatively recent practice emphasis on relatively. There are migrants detained at the border as I type, but they were also being detained in 2014 during Obama's second administration."

"If this first act is set back then, that would place Bob's time with Willa in Baktan Cross in 2030. But maybe Bob and Perfidia met later during the Biden administration or anytime up to September 2025, the month of the film's release, which would place the bulk of One Battle After Another in 2041. This seems to be the common belief among viewers, who have keyed into production details like the sci-fi-ish retrofuturist tech that Steven Lockjaw (Sean Penn"

One Battle After Another features a 16-year jump separating a kinetic first act from the remainder of the film. The timeline remains ambiguous, with clues like smartphones, migrants detained at the border, Mo Bamba, and nonbinary pronouns complicating precise dating. Revolutionary group the French 75 evokes 1960s counterinsurgency aesthetics while production design and retrofuturist tech suggest a near-future setting. Character anchors include activist Perfidia Beverly Hills, ex-partner Bob, and their daughter Willa. Viewer interpretations vary, with plausible bulk timelines ranging from the 2030s to the 2040s based on in-film and production details.

Read at www.vulture.com