Don't be fooled by the cop car chases through mud and the Charlie's Angels soundtrack of the trailer above, Alan J. Pakula's The Parallax View is one slow-burning, mysterious, smart as hell film. Released amidst the wiretapping Watergate fiasco and Nixon's eventual resignation, and just a few years after the tumultuous assassination-heavy '60s, this film appears smack dab in the new Hollywood of the '70s; antiheroes are the norm and paranoia is on the mind.
Parallax, like Three Days of the Condor (another '70s political paranoia thriller to be covered by this blog) was written by screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr. with the darkest sense of humor and the smartest edge of right-wing political jabbing.
Warren Beatty is a journalist trying to uncover the truth about a senator's assassination at the top of Seattle's Space Needle. Fellow journalist and wonderfully acted neurotic Paula Prentiss is convinced anyone witness to this shooting is being killed off themselves by a shadowy group. How right she is.
Beatty's search leads from dead end to murdered personal contact. In order to infiltrate this mysterious Parallax Corporation, he puts himself in the mind (or the position of the available employee applicant, more accurately) to join the ranks of would-be assassins.
The film's infamous "brainwashing scene" is a bit hokey by today's standards but I'm sure made quite an impact then in the more innocent, pre-internet, pre-ADHD age. The first modern filmic instance of this might have been Alex's (Malcom McDowell) "visually restrained" brainwash/torture in Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange.
Instead of rehabilitation as the goal, like in Clockwork, it's subliminal advertising to recruit killers. How would this ring true today and what scary/scarier tactics would be used? Virtual reality sensurround simulation/stimulation?
Think of this in today's terms, on this day of Trump's inauguration: "The Parallax Corporation/___ (fill in the blank with a contemporary international corporation's name) Division of Human Engineering."
Frightening.
"We hope you find the test a pleasant experience."
No comments:
Post a Comment