One Battle After Another , the sui generis 162-minute epic that’s now in wide release, is many movies in one. It’s writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson ’s fiendishly inspired riff on postmodern master Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland ; it’s a riveting action flick; it’s a hilarious stoner comedy; it’s a treatise on the true purpose of revolutionary politics; and it’s 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 ), or in the delightful interviews that Anderson and his principal star, Leonardo DiCaprio , have given.

But One Battle After Another is something else, too: a movie that’s powered by music. In a moment

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