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With There Will Be Blood (2007), The Master (2012), and finally Inherent Vice, Paul Thomas Anderson has crafted the most unlikely of cinematic trilogies. From the rise of Daniel Plainview and American capitalism at the birth of the century, through to the post-war uncertainty and discomfort personified in Freddie Quell and finally, the death of the swinging 60s as seen through Doc Sportello’s bloodshot eyes, Anderson’s meditation on 20th century America is complete. While the first two entries are more immediately accessible, it is Vice that will hold pride of place in many DVD collections for years to come, if only to work out what actually happened.

It is 1970 in sunny Southern California. Film-brat Anderson can’t help but immediately smack us with a number of classic noir tropes. Our ramshackle stoner PI, Larry “Doc” Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix), is approached by his femme fatale of an ex-girlfriend Shasta Fay (a breakout Katherine Waterston) and asked to investigate a plot involving the potential kidnapping of her millionaire land developer boyfriend (Eric Roberts) by his wife, and her boyfriend. Oftentimes helped, but mostly hindered by Josh Brolin’s civil-rights violating Detective “Bigfoot” Bjornsen (with whom he shares a symbiotic relationship whose depths only become clear in the final reel), Doc encounters Black Panther militants, drug lords, the FBI and Nazi bikers on his quest to make sense of it all.

For most of the running time, the film is a nostalgic, fun, trippy expedition through a time when the free loving 60s gave way to disillusionment in the aftermath of the Manson murders. Helped by Robert Elswit’s glorious work on 35mm, and the finest of Jonny Greenwood’s scores, Anderson in the final half-hour elevates Vice from merely Chinatown via Cheech & Chong to something deeply profound and movingly romantic.