视差

“Trust no one and nobody is safe” is the tenet of THE PARALLAX VIEW, the second installment of Pakula’s Political Paranoia trilogy, sandwiched between KLUTE (1971) and ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MAN (1976).

Constructing as a David and Goliath story about a conscientious journalist Joe Frady (Beatty) bird-dogging Parallax Corporate, a secret organization which is behind many a flagrant political assassination, the film is so driven by the stark revelation of an omniscient entity which can snuff out any living beings on planet earth in a trice, that our David is on a hiding to nothing, Goliath, which we are only permitted to see a tiny tip of its iceberg, perversely wins.

Narratively, only by the death of his old flame Lee Carter (a distraught Prentiss), a television journalist who has tearfully solicited his help after she finds her life in danger, but to no avail (a self-important man can never trust a woman’s sixth sense?), could Joe be jolted into action to burrow into the myth. After brushing with death multiple times (car chase is a tired visual stimulus, but for a ‘70s thriller, it is a prerequisite, and Joe’s survival of a boat exposition is simply because he has that “protagonist’s halo”), he finally attains the paper trail that leads him to the furtive organization and tenders his application as a potential psychopath under an alias.

After that, the film enters into the spirit of the all-powering myth of an opaque, immaterial behemoth (those hallucinatory brainwashing montages chalk up the ethos of that particularly turbulent era to a fare-thee-well), every progress made by our heroic Joe (he niftily thwarts the attempt of an explosion inside an aloft aircraft) can only imperil him further in the trap awaits him.

The climax takes place inside a cavernous auditorium, and Joe is framed not by his action but inaction, a fly on the wall hidden in the shadows, he watches attentively but hasn’t a clue of what is on the horizon, until another assassination takes place and he becomes the fall guy who cannot extricate himself from his sorry fate.

Beatty’s aloofness (and awful hairdo) does sugar the bitter pills we must swallow for the movie’s bleakness, but the technique of Pakula and cinematographer Gordon Willis is so remarkable that THE PARALLAX VIEW can survive simply for its visual brilliance: those gorgeous split focus shots will continue to shine in ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MAN two years later; its mise en scène often reflects an abstracted, architectonic vein of beauty, yet more often than not, it breathes like a menacing, almost primordial beast (the dam with onrushing water, the empty, three-colored festooned auditorium with ambulating squad cars, or the lofty Space Needle it self, looks like a somber harbinger of perilousness).

The effect often diminishes its characters into a flyspeck, not unlike what the film tries to scare us: every and each one, whether important or ordinary, is expendable and unlamented. It leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth, but that doesn’t make it less true, Pakula’s picture dares to go against the grain, for that matter alone, it deserves a loud pat on its shoulder!.

referential entries: Pakula’s ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MAN (1976, 8.3/10); John Schlesinger’s MARATHON MAN (1976, 7.3/10); John Frankenheimer’s THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962, 7.8/10).

Title: The Parallax View

Year: 1974

Country: USA

Language: English

Genre: Drama, Thriller

Director: Alan J. Pakula

Screenwriters: David Giler, Lorenzo Semple Jr.

based on the novel by Loren Singer

Music: Michael Small

Cinematography: Gordon Willis

Editing: John W. Wheeler

Cast:

Warren Beatty

Hume Cronyn

Walter McGinn

Paula Prentiss

William Daniels

Kelly Thordsen

Earl Hindman

Bill McKinney

Jim Davis

William Jordan

Edward Winter

Anthony Zerbe

Kenneth Mars

Rating: 7.5/10