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. There’s “ Mo Bamba .” There are nonbinary pronouns. It could be 2018 or 2025 or 2040 when the majority of the film takes place — it’s hard to say.

Since its release, viewers have been arguing about the chronology of One Battle After Another. Although the revolutionary antics of the French 75 resemble the counterinsurgency movements of the 1960s, the first act of the fil