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Up until Election Day on November 4th, we'll be taking a look at one movie every day that involves an election, which gives us seven great political movies to discuss. With 7 days to go, let's start with movie #1!

The Parallax View (1974)

Alan J. Pakula’s paranoid film stars Warren Beatty as a reckless reporter going undercover to investigate the mysterious deaths of several witnesses to the assassination of a Presidential candidate, steering him into the Parallax Corporation, a shadowy business that recruits sociopathic individuals capable of performing political assassinations.



What’s fascinating about The Parallax View is that it starts as a political thriller, but as the rabbit hole goes deeper, the film evolves into a giant corporate conspiracy and the story of a man struggling to stay free in a world that blurs the line between politics and survivalism. This bleak portrait of the post-JFK American government stays ambiguous as to the nature of the conspiracy and how far-reaching it is, which makes it all the more frightening. Though never outright stated, the killings of Presidential hopefuls and subsequent cover-ups suggest a ploy to retain power. The fact that the assassins are from a private company also alludes to a government in bed with corporations for mutual profiteering. Beatty’s performance here is just the right kind of nervous hound, and the film keeps the suspense tight all the way to the shocking finale.

Resonance: The committee declaring all crimes perpetrated by Parallax as the work of a single man, shunning the conspiracy altogether, of course, is a direct manisfestation of the public's lack of satisfaction with the cloudy answers they received from authorities in regards to the deaths of their leaders. The film came out in 1974; in the 10-year span before its making, the US saw the untimely deaths of John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. The film's tagline, "As American as apple pie", in reference to assassinations, is extremely chilling to say the least. It remains one of the most effective poster taglines I've ever seen.

Unforgettable Scene: The film is most famous for a sequence in which Beatty is strapped down on a chair and shown a montage deconstructing the link between words and images. Though reminiscent of the popular scene from A Clockwork Orange, the Parallax View version is unsettling for a different reason. Rather than showing the reaction of the character, the film presents the Parallax montage in full, without cuts, to create the illusion that the movie’s audience is also being forced to watch this borderline brainwashing montage (see below).

Remember: after you're done watching movies, don't forget to vote!

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Comments (1)

October 29, 2008, AMBER said:

	WHAT I HAVE KNOWN TO BE TRUE FOR YEARS!
	Votes: +0 report abuse vote down vote up

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