The Parallax View 1974 (Incredible Montage) 18+ Only

After a presidential candidate is assassinated, political reporter Joe Frady (Warren Beatty) begins to suspect that the mysterious Parallax Corporation may be involved. As he investigates, others who share his suspicions start turning up dead, including his editor, Bill Rintels (Hume Cronyn). Eventually, Frady uncovers a conspiracy bigger than anyone expected and must race to prevent the corporation's next big hit as this political thriller plays out in an explosive game of cat and mouse.

Midway through the film, Beatty's Joseph Frady arrives at the HQ of Parallax Corporation, a company that specializes in political assassinations. As part of his training — it seems to be the extent of his training — Frady watches a slideshow of images juxtaposed with certain concepts (LOVE, FATHER, ENEMY, ME, and so on), a sequence that splits the difference between two great Kubrick scenes, the Ludvico brainwashing in A Clockwork Orange and the epileptic hypnosis of the "stargate" sequence in 2001. As the slideshow progresses, the words and images acquire different resonances: HAPPINESS confused with conquest, LOVE with violence and death. It's like a five-minute experimental film smuggled inside the casing of a blockbuster political thriller.

The sequence nicely captures the confusion of post-Kennedy America, where the meaning of long-held values of family, patriotism, and self-worth had been tossed to the wind. It represents the flickering mental state of a nation whose search for meaning at times felt meaningless when the very foundational ideas of nationhood had been yanked loose from their longstanding connotations.