Of the three films in Pakula\u2019s so-called \u201cparanoia trilogy\u201d (the others are Klute <\/em>and All The President\u2019s Men<\/a><\/em>), Parallax View <\/em>is by far the loopiest, and thus most resonant with our current political hellscape. After the assassination of Senator Carroll, scruffy and scrappy journalist Peter Frady (Warren Beatty) starts investigating the mysterious deaths of several people who were witnesses to the senator\u2019s murder. (This is inspired by a real-life, essentially debunked, conspiracy theory about the JFK assassination.) He uncovers a shady organization, the Parallax Corporation, which recruits and trains antisocial men to become assassins for hire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As both a thriller and a reflection on a political atmosphere, Parallax View <\/em>is magnificently constructed: scenes of investigation, plotting and action are tautly and stunningly put together. It\u2019s remarkable what Pakula (with a screenplay by David Giler and Lorenzo Semple Jr., adapting a novel by Loren Singer) is able to fit into a runtime of 102 minutes. There are multiple assassinations, car chases and explosions, but none of it feels rushed or forced. Everything builds steadily and methodically towards an increasing awareness of (and terror of) shadowy, ruthless forces at work. The film\u2019s final set piece is a marvel: a scene of relatively banal political performance is cut through with interludes of ominous, impotent observation and the mounting tension of an inevitable, if unpredictable, catastrophe. <\/strong>Gordon Willis\u2019s cinematography is gorgeous, and conveys that eerie feeling of constant surveillance and threat, and an atmosphere of encroaching darkness. Michael Small\u2019s score also adds a lot to this atmosphere\u2014warped and mournful versions of sounds of Americana enhance the paranoia; its more mournful refrains feel like an elegy for an idea of the nation that can no longer sustain itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Parallax View <\/em>manages to seamlessly combine a great thriller with political heft by largely avoiding heavy-handed parallels or speechifying (though there is mention of the traumatizing political assassinations of the 1960s, and the government\u2019s official ruling that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman in the John F. Kennedy\u2019s death.) The film shows a refreshing (and totally earned) belief that political themes and concerns can be conveyed and felt solely through sound and image. Silences and slower beats allow the political ramifications of the action to reverberate in the audience\u2019s mind. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This is not to say that it never uses cinema as a blunt political instrument.; one of the film\u2019s most arresting scenes occurs when Frady, going undercover as a potential Parallax recruit, watches a film montage used to indoctrinate the angry and disaffected and arouse their violent tendencies. Designed to enforce positive associations with images of brutality and fascism, it mingles stock photos of beatifically happy families and schmoopy hippy couples with images of violent protests, war, and, finally, Nazism. It\u2019s something of an Eisenstein homage, and can\u2019t be boiled down to a single thesis, but you can see how it might convince an angry young man that he\u2019d be carried to Valhalla by buxom Valkyries if he took a gun to the White House. Even if the movie spectator isn\u2019t taken in, we\u2019re left with an alarming picture of America as a deeply divided and schizoid place that\u2019s a tinder box ready to ignite at any moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Conspiracy thrillers work, and are made to last, when they go beyond representing a specific conspiracy and capture the larger mood and fears of a nation. <\/strong>Parallax View<\/em>\u2019s particular obsession with political assassinations reflects the trauma and paranoia of the \u201870s. But the fear that larger forces could turn disgruntled white men into killing machines is all too real, a fever dream not so far off from the nightmare we\u2019re actually living. When Jack Younger, a creepily ingratiating Parallax Corporation suit, tries to recruit Frady, he asks him: \u201cHas it ever crossed your mind that maybe it\u2019s everybody else\u2019s problem that they don\u2019t get along with you?\u201d It\u2019s a call to resentment and radicalization that nobody even bothers to whisper in dark hallways anymore. “The Parallax View” is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video<\/a> and The Criterion Channel<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/parallax-1024x576.jpg\")
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