THE PARALLAX VIEW (Alan J. Pakula, 1974) R

Reviewed: April 25th, 2002

Gordon Willis (The Landlord, Klute, The Godfather, The Parallax View, The Godfather Part II, All the President's Men, Annie Hall, Interiors, Manhattan, Stardust Memories) is cinema's all time greatest cinematographer, a light painter of unsurpassable talent and worth. While his revolutionary work on The Godfathers is his most renown, and his black and white work with Woody Allen might be his most purely gorgeous, Willis's collaboration with Alan J. Pakula, particularly Klute, All the President's Men and The Parallax View, yielded my personal favorite of his work. Working within a luxurious 2.35:1 frame, Gordon provided these films with simultaneous beauty and dirt, relying heavily on dark hues and striking silhouettes.

The Parallax View (starring Warren Beatty playing against type, moving far away from his standard, suave manipulator; he's a loner here, an ex-alcoholic, non-womanizing and laconic) might be classified as a political thriller, and being such, the fact that it hasn't aged a bit in twenty-eight years is all the more remarkable (politics = usually timely). View still feels so fresh because it doesn't pull punches (unflappable rule: unsentimental always ages better than sentimental), and like Klute, by relying as much, if not more, on the eerie, unshakable Willis visuals than dialogue and characterization. There's a supremely pervasive mood of paranoia, discomfort and disturbance here which swiftly hammers itself home, hitting the viewer like great music. Plus The Parallax View features a brainwashing sequence that is among the best five minutes ever put on celluloid, mesmerizing, miraculous work, so powerful I imagine Kubrick wishes he had conceived of it himself to have placed into A Clockwork Orange.

A probable masterpiece, though not perfect, The Parallax View takes some plot leaps a little too fast. Pakula's stubborn like that and it's hard to fault the film such things considering all its achievements are also owed to how uncompromising a filmmaker Pakula was during in the 70s. This is a man who was completely comfortable presenting the audience with difficult, evasive material and doing whatever he needed to achieve his desired end result. The Parallax View shoots to kill and refuses to play by the rules.

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