Customer Reviews

The Parallax View (Widescreen)

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3 star:		(4)
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1 star:		(3)

 

 

After watching a week of the History Channel's "The Men Who Killed Kennedy," someone recommended watching this movie. I tracked it down with the help of Amazon.com. Produced only ten years after, it splendidly parallels the JFK assassination. It was highly insightful, given the time it was produced. The story line is believable, the acting is superb, and although dated, sends a powerful message. Thanks, Warren, for having the courage to be who you are!!!

Beatty plays journalist investigating mysterious deaths of witnesses to a political assassination.

Pakula's dark and paranoid masterpiece was origninally shot by Gordon Willis (Godfathers I II and III, Klute, Zeilig, etc.) in 2.35 aspect. Willis, a master of light and composition, developed frames for this film that are practically abstract. His sense of composition (I'm sure Pakula was part of this) is brilliant: the static formalistic compositions; the use of long lenses to flatten each image into an (almost) isometric projection.

Now, maybe I'm getting carried away here, but "parallax" and "isometric"...? Hmmm... Both are terms related to geometry the "perception" of reality -- which is more-or-less the subtext of this film.

Anyway, after its dissapearance from theater screens this film made numerous appearances on TV (mainly late at night) in a pan-and-scan version. Same with the VHS version. So until the DVD was released, this was the only way I (and most other people) had seen it.

Well twice the frame is twice as good -- now entire sequences can be re-examined and reinterpreted (the ending has elements which appeared seperated in the VHS version).

I found the picture and sound to be good, but I'd hoped for more additional material (a documentary, a making of, an interview or two -- anything). This is certainly one film that deserves the extra attention. However I'm grateful for the 2.35 version.

Bottom line: a real treat for cinephiles, and a great movie for everyone else.

Pakula did a great job directing this classic. I love the imagery of this film, the scene set up and the eventual consequences that take place. Warren Beatty is great as the investigative reporter. This is one great film! One of the most underrated films of the 70's!

I was trying to think how to describe The Parallax View and I realized its the conspricy movie Oliver Stone would make if had more talent and less ego.

Since that won't happen we're left with Parallax View which is a series of events that vaguely correspond to actual occurances. The point is not to theroize about an actual asasination; its to show how a fictional conspricy might unfold.

Alas, the unintended consequence is all the single bullet/talk radio/grassy noll nuts attaching undue importance to it. May I remind you that our current government--as sinister as any I can recall--can't even fake WMDs? How would people like this create a Parallax Corporation?

To start, this movie isn't aimed at the no-brainer-Friday-the-13th crowd. If you want mindless entertainment, you'd better look elsewhere. This is a movie that will make you THINK.

To put it briefly, the movie is similar to a Robert Ludlom movie--nothing is what it seems, and there are conspiracies and double crosses at every bend. The most commonly mentioned sequence, i.e. the montage, will either strike you as boring or a tour-de-force, depending upon your psychological makeup. I've always felt its importance overrated.

Rather, it's the convoluted plot that makes this movie worth repeated viewing. In fact, it's a movie that reveals more and more with each viewing--it wasn't until about the 3rd viewing that I realized that the whole thing was a major slap at the Warren Commission (for those that don't remember, the Warren Commission decided Oswald was JFK's lone killer).

So sit right back, put on your thinking cap, and enjoy a masterpiece.

Reminds me very much of THE WICKER MAN (released that same year of '74) in that both films chart the nightmarish progress of men who are seeking to uncover a mystery and right a great wrong, who must plunge into disorienting environments where none of the rules they adhered to back in the 'normal world' apply; they can't get their footing, and quickly become controlled by events. By the time they realize their every step has been not just watched but directed from the beginning...it's too late.

Warren Beatty's Joe Frady, a minor reporter in the Northwest, begins investigating the deaths of witnesses to a political assassination he'd covered three years before. He stumbles upon literature from The Parallax Corporation, an outfit he comes to believe are clandestinely recruiting & training assassins; he decides to penetrate the group as a 'job applicant', armed with a mass-murderer's psych-test responses and a false identity. He has made a slight but fatal error in judgment, however, for Parallax are in the business of identifying and grooming fall guys - custom-built, designer patsies to draw attention from their trained cadre of actual assassins during the deed, then to be killed in the ensuing melee. Ingeniously, Parallax carefully select appropriate moody-loner backgrounds that will satisfy official inquiries into the murder that the killer was a certified strange-o, thus acting alone.

The first half of PARALLAX plays like a standard macho action picture: barroom brawls, car chases, grouchy editors, redneck cops, sexually forthright women swarming over the studly maverick hero. Stay with it, however. The second half is obviously the movie Beatty, Pakula and Gordon Willis were after - stark, overwhelmingly visual, mountingly claustrophic yet set in vastness (every interior set is like an aircraft hangar; even the catwalk goes on forever). The car chase bravado of the first hour is long forgotten by this point, with Beatty assuming the holy-fool status of Edward Woodward's stiff-necked policeman in THE WICKER MAN. While it's true the two halves of this film never do fit together comfortably, the nightcap of this double feature ranks among the best moviemaking of the 1970s.

The Parallax View is the ultimate paranoia film, bar none. It is the standard by which all other films of this genre are judged. In other words, it is a classic. It combines stellar direction with a very believable performance by Warren Beatty to create a film that has no equal. From the opening on the Space Needle, it is obvious this movie isn't going to be run of the mill. From there, every plot line just gets bigger and bigger, until everything envelops Warren Beatty to form the film's stunning conclusion. Alan Pakula would eventually follow this film up with All The Presidents Men, that film is good, but this film is great. It stands as his masterwork, and it is the best of the 70's paranoia pictures.

This film is a blend of the unsolved assassinations of President JFK and Senator RFK. As fiction, it can tell the truth without getting bogged down by facts: the use of assassinations to control politics and society.

It starts with the assassination of a Senator during his campaign, and tells the story of a reporter ("Joe Fraidy"!) who seeks the facts behind the deaths of the people who witnessed this assassination. It leads to a corporation that recruits suitable subjects for special tasks. The movie is mostly visual at times: it shows you scenes and lets you figure out what it means. You must watch it attentively! The end occurs in an auditorium, just like "The Manchurian Candidate".

Can a "Manchurian Candidate" be created for political assassination? The very word "assassin" was derived from such a program! You can look up the documentation on the "MK ULTRA" program, and wonder what cam next.

An unsolved assassination seems to be worthy of filming; see "Z", "The Day of the Jackal", or "Suddenly". A solved assassination may not be commercially viable (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley) because it is too real, horrible, and sad.

To learn more about the unsolved assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, read Philip Melanson's 1991 book, which used newlt released LAPD and FBI files. You can also read a book on South American countries to see examples where assassinations and coups were used to control politics and society. B. Honnegger's "October Surprise" also lists the fate of the people who were involved in the secret 1980 meeting in Paris between Reagan partisans and Iranians.

In my humble opinion the late Alan J. Pakula was the finest suspense director of all time and the think man's answer to Alfred Hitchcock. Now I don't mean to put down the "Master of Suspense," but his movies were made with the sole intention of being entertaining, reguardless of how shallow they may be. Pakula, on the other hand, interweaved with his nail-biting tension meaningful substance-based stories that only added to my appreciation of his films. In fact in most instances it was the political ramifications that spawned from his movies that made them more terrifying than any shower scene or telescopic lens could ever think of being. Take for example All the President's Men. He allowed the picture to slowly build until your stomach's in knots and you leave the theatre more unsettled than you went in.

The Parallax View is much the same way. It starts with a political assassination and ends with a twist that even M. Night Shyamalan couldn't have written any better. Warren Beatty stars as a Washington reporter who's witness to the assassination and, like everybody else, doesn't question the government's findings when they rule it was the act of a lone gunman (where have we heard that before?). That is until other witnesses start dying off under mysterious circumstances. But it's not before six of the eighteen, including his ex-girlfriend, die that he is moved to action. He starts prying around, as reporters have a tendancy to do, seeing what he can uncover.

Joe (Beatty) follows a lead to the small town of Salmontail where a seventh witness has gone missing and is now presumed dead. He is, of course, having fallen victim to a fishing accident that drowned him. And it's not long after discovering this that the first attempt on Joe's life is made. This only serves to strengthen his resolve, which he puts to work by applying to a mysterious corporation that may be a front for finding and hiring potential assassins. If this isn't frightening enough for you waiting until you discover the bizarre truth, it's more chilling than anything you can imagine.

Now I don't pretend to be pretentious enough to suggest that everyone's going to be as engaged by this film as I was. It's a very intricate and complex thriller that doesn't allow you to breeze through without being made to think. If you're looking to put your brain on cruise control and relax after a long day's work, and there's nothing wrong with that, than you're looking in the wrong place. This is not the kind of movie you can simply wander in and out of, because it flows at a very particular pace that to break it up would only be doing yourself a disservice.

Beatty is superb in his performance and, being as he's the only notable name in front of the camera, is asked to carry much of the movie. There's seldom a scene that goes without him being in it, and by doing this we see the proceedings through his eyes. It's a very effect and absorbing technique that makes the audience a part of the story rather than merely observing it. We're never allowed to get ahead of our protagnoist, putting us on the same rollercoast ride of revelations that he's on.

I hate to overemphasize the impact of the film's conclusion, but if you lose patience just remember, the ending changes the tone of everything that proceeded it. This is a classic thriller.

"The Parallax View" was big liberal Warren Beatty's attempt to describe a conspiracy involving shadowy government agencies. It is entertaining and worth watching, but misses the mark. Beatty seems to be trying to piece together an explanation on how, or even who, killed Kennedy. "The Manchurian Candidate" may have inspired him. Beatty plays a journalist who goes undercover, allowing himself to be recruited by the Parallax Corporation, presumably a CIA front that trains assassins. His psychological profile is determined in part by watching a disturbing montage of scenes, ranging from love, sex and patriotism to war, gore and devil worship, mixed with the juxtaposition of wealth vs. need. The point seems to be that people go hungry while rich America has sex and kills people?

STEVEN TRAVERS
AUTHOR OF "BARRY BONDS: BASEBALL'S SUPERMAN"
STWRITES@AOL.COM