THE PARALLAX VIEW (1974)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
At a public function on the observation deck at the Seattle Space Needle, a senator running for President is assassinated (echoes here of Robert Kennedy's assassination). Chaos strikes, a patsy falls to his death, and there are several witnesses. Right from the start, the paranoia begins as a frightened TV reporter named Lee Carter (Paula Prentiss), in a flash-forward three years later, tells her tale to Joe Frady (Warren Beatty), a newspaper reporter who doesn't believe in conspiracies. Carter is convinced that her life is in danger because of what she witnessed, yet Joe is not too sure. That is only until Carter is found dead under suspicious circumstances. Joe investigates, especially after the death of other witnesses prior to Carter's, much to the chagrin of his editor (a wonderful Hume Cronyn) who reluctantly gives him petty cash. From small-town dams to a sheriff's itchy-trigger-finger to incoming explosions in boats and planes with other presidential candidates, to the cold and distant look of the actual Parallax corporation, Joe braves one calamity after another to such an amazing degree of survival that I thought he was involved with Parallax.
That is the basic problem with "The Parallax View" - Joe is shown to be as remote as the corporation he's after. Episode after episode shows him surviving every obstacle yet we are never rooting for him. Beatty never struck me as a nuanced actor and he's always come across as aloof (especially in the experimental New-Wave oddity, "Mickey One"), thus the actor's emotional distance emerges at its peak in this film. The other issue I have is that it is never clear why Parallax wants to assassinate these presidential candidates. Are the candidates too progressive in their politics? I don't need films to explain everything but my impression of Parallax is that they don't want senators to run for the Oval Office. Who do they want or who does the government want that hires these assassins?
There is one stunning sequence in "The Parallax View" that made my jaw drop. It shows Joe's introduction to Parallax as he watches a mind-control film with on-screen titles about happiness and home coupled with evil atrocities, like the Holocaust, suggesting that everything and everyone can be corrupted. It is stunning to watch but there is no visible reaction from Joe - director Alan J. Pakula uses long lenses to deflate the main protagonist. A close-up would've been nice but if Pakula wants to demonstrate Joe as an emotionally cold man who is not affected by anything, he succeeds. No wonder Parallax wants to hire Joe as an assassin.
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