A former bombmaking revolutionary on the run, adrift from society and living in a bubble until his kid has to pay for his past life. “One Battle After Another,” the new Paul Thomas Anderson movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and based on Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel “Vineland,” is a pop culture talker that explores thorny themes of revolution and societal tumult traceable through other TV, movies, and books. Here’s a brief streaming (and reading) guide to help you make sense of it.
“Manhunt: Unabomber” (TV series): The first season of Discovery Channel’s anthology series follows America’s most infamous underground bomber, Ted Kaczynski (Paul Bettany), and the FBI investigation, led by Jim Fitzgerald (Sam Worthington), that led to his capture. Kaczynski was a lone wolf terrorist without a French 75 (the revolutionary outfit to which DiCaprio’s Bob belongs in the movie). He definitely wasn’t charming. But he did see explosives as a means to tear down a society he felt was beyond redemption.
Stream it: Prime Video, AMC+, Roku Channel
“The Weather Underground” (documentary) – Sam Green’s searing 2002 documentary provides an unblinking overview of the radical group that splintered off from Students for a Democratic Society and chose violence. They, too, had bombmakers, and when one of their bombs exploded unexpectedly in March of 1970 – killing three of the group’s own members and destroying a four-story townhouse in Greenwich Village – the Weathermen scattered underground, assuming new lives and identities. The film probes the destructive nature of revolutionary mania and asks what it might feel like to live life constantly looking over your shoulder.
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Stream it: Prime Video, YouTube
“Inherent Vice” (novel, movie) – Anderson’s previous Pynchon adaptation, from 2014, isn’t nearly as exciting as his new one. But it has a shambolic, postmodern charm of its own. Joaquin Phoenix stars as Doc Sportello, a private detective in 1970s Los Angeles who could be a cousin of Bob’s: perpetually stoned, baffled by circumstances beyond his control, in over his head in a world passing him by. Pynchon has a way of satirizing the counterculture even as he feels its pain.
Stream it: Prime Video
“Running on Empty” (movie) – A gentler take on the perils of being a child of the revolution, this 1988 drama stars River Phoenix as Danny, the teenage son of two ex-radicals (Christine Lahti and Judd Hirsch) on the run since blowing up a napalm lab during the Vietnam War. Like Bob’s daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti), Danny really wants to have a regular teen life, which is impossible when you have to keep changing your name and moving to a new city. He loves his parents; he’s also tired of paying for their sins. Phoenix, who died five years after the movie came out, was never better.
Stream it: Prime Video
“Days of Rage” (book) – This one you’ll just have to read, and you won’t be sorry. Bryan Burrough’s propulsive nonfiction book follows the FBI investigations of various 1970s domestic terrorist groups – including the Weathermen, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the FALN, and others – in a way that drives home the chaos and violent revolutionary fervor of those times. It’s an often-overlooked chapter of recent U.S. history, presented with the verve of a great storyteller.
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Chris Vognar can be reached at chris.vognar@globe.com. Follow him on Instagram at @chrisvognar and on Bluesky at chrisvognar.bsky.social.