Parasite

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

Parasite (2019), was the first foreign-language film to win the Best Picture Oscar. Writer-director Bong Goon Ho here again explores the class divisions between the privileged and the poor, as he did in other films such as Snowpiercer and Mickey 17.

The first shot is that of the view from a basement apartment, stressing the subterranean life of the poor. Mr. Kim (Song Hang Ho) and his family live there. He is an out-of-work driver. Phones are shut off and they have been stealing the internet from a neighbor, who recently changed her password, cutting off the family members crowded together in the cramped dwelling. There is a picture and medal that was won in a track and field event, which shows that there is talent here, but it has not been able to sustain itself in the poverty surrounding it. They have stink bugs in the place. When an exterminator comes by outside, they leave the window open to kill the insects, but it is they who may be the target in this society.

They make money by folding pizza boxes to get by. The son, Ki-Woo (Choi Woo-Shik) has a friend, Min-Hyuk (Park Seo-Joon), who brings them what is known as a Scholar’s Rock that presages good fortune. The mother, Choong Sook (Jang Hye-Jin) says he should have brought food, which is what this deprived family really needs, not a lucky charm.

Ki-Woo is to take over tutoring English from the leaving Min-Hyuk of the daughter, Da-Hye (Jung Ji-So), of the rich Park family. Min-Hyuk doesn’t want some college student putting the moves on Da-Hye, who he likes and sees his friend as a faithful protector. Ki-Woo excelled in school in English, but the family couldn’t afford an education for him, or his sister, Ki-Jeong (Park So-Dam), who is an excellent artist. The only way the lower-class family can attain employment is through fraud (Are they parasites? The title of the film works on different levels). So, Ki-Woo pretends to be a college student, named Kevin, and his sister creates fake documents for him. As the father humorously says if there was a major at Oxford University for forgery, his daughter would excel there. Ki-Woo says he will go to the university and the document is just a bit premature because he will get the diploma, which shows his inner drive, but is it impossible for his dreams to come true?

In contrast, the Park house is luxurious. The first shot of Mrs. Park has her snoozing with her head down on a table. It’s a picture of the idle rich. Min-Hyuk called her “simple,” and her Ki-Wook’s family exploit this lack of shrewdness. (Is Mrs. Park in her own way a parasite living off society as a noncontributing member?) Ki-Woo tells Da-Hye that she needs “vigor” to do well on her tests, slashing through her studies as if clearing a jungle. His advice contrasts with the example of the sleeping mother, and the lax attitude of the entitled wealthy. The Park’s young son, Da-Song (Jung Hyeon Jun), likes to draw, so Ki-Woo sees this fact as an opportunity to insert his sister as an art teacher named Jessica.

Da-Hye already knows that her brother is a phony who pretends to be inspired to paint. Ki-Woo, being insightful, already knows this fact. So, it is not just Ki-Woo’s family that are pretenders. It is interesting that Ki-Woo and his sister are ambitious people, while the children of the rich are dependent on their parents, like parasites. Da Hye is attracted to Ki-Woo and they kiss, which subverts Min-Hyuk’s plan, and entwines Ki-Woo even more with the Park family.

Ki-Jeong is a better parent for Da-Song than is Mrs. Park. She is strong-willed and gets the boy to act properly quickly. She says that Da-Song needs “art therapy” because he exhibits a psychological pathology in his paintings (she just looked the term up to initiate the scam). She says it was due to a previous trauma, which apparently did happen to the boy. Of course, she must charge Mrs. Park exorbitant fees for such in-depth treatment.

While getting a ride home in the Park family limo, Ji-Jeong gets the idea of leaving her underwear in the car to entrap the driver so that her father can become the new Park’s chauffeur. Mr. Park says that his driver dared to “cross the line,” to have sex in the back seat of the limo, where he sits. The idea of line crossing is a metaphor for the divider between the classes.

Kim, who has tried several businesses in the past but could not become successful, satisfies Mr. Park with his driving. His family then plans on getting rid of the housekeeper, Moon-Kwang (Lee Jung-Eun), who is not as easily duped. She was the housekeeper of the architect who built the house that now is owned by the Parks (It is an interesting fact that becomes important later). Ki-Woo discovers from Da-Hye that the housekeeper is very allergic to peaches and the fruit can’t be in the house. Ki-Jeong sprinkles peach fuzz onto the housekeeper’s neck. Kim then makes a video of the housekeeper going to the hospital. He says he was there for a physical and saw the woman coughing. He tells Mrs. Park he overheard that she may have TB. When Kim shakes Mrs. Kim’s hand, she asks if he washed his hands. It shows a repulsion toward the lower classes, and Mrs. Kim may see the handshake as another crossing of the line. The family rehearses Kim’s performance to recruit the mother, and it may be that director Ho is commenting on the filmmaking process, even adding ketchup to the kitchen trashcan to make it appear as if blood was on the housekeeper’s tissues as sort of a special effect. Mrs. Park fires the housekeeper and now Kim’s wife, Choong Sook, is hired to replace her. Mr. Park notes that his wife can’t do anything around the house, stressing her parasitic nature.

While talking about the Kim family’s good fortune, Kim sees a man again urinating outside their basement apartment. Ki-Woo throws water on the man to chase him away. This act and the fact that the chauffeur and the housekeeper lost their jobs implies that when some members move up in the class system it may be at the expense of others since society does not provide for the welfare of all its citizens.

The Parks go away on a camping trip and the Kims indulge themselves by taking over the mansion, eating, bathing, and drinking. It is there moment where they can pretend to be rich, “pretend” being the operative word. Ki-Woo says he wants to be able to ask Da-Hye out, maybe marry her, and the house will become their home for real. His family laugh at this daydream knowing that they will never be able to rise into the upper class. Ki-Jeong has been hired to act like a guest at some weddings to catch the bouquet, and her acting has become quite good, as she has already shown. Performance is necessary to acquire some benefits given their lower-class status, since that is the closest they will get to being among the rich. Kim says even though Mrs. Park is rich she is nice, but Choong Sook says she is “nice because she is rich,” which means she can afford to be nice, not worrying about scraping by each day to get ahead. All the worries of the rich are “ironed out,” they are “smoothed out by money.” It reminds one of The Great Gatsby, where F. Scott Fitzgerald says that the rich can be careless because they can fall back into the comfort of their money.

The family is drunk now, and Ki-Woo says that his sister seems to fit in well in the extravagant house. Choong Sook says that her husband could never fit in, and would scurry like the cockroaches in their apartment if Mr. Park came in now. Kim seems angry at the insect comparison and he grabs his wife by her shirt. He and his wife then laugh, and Kim says to his son that they were acting. Was he? They have become so used to conning others that they can’t tell if they are acting or not, being genuine or pretending.

The old housekeeper, Moon-Kwang, shows up and says she left something in the basement. She is there to rescue her husband, Geun-Sae (Park Myung-Hoon) who has been living underground for over four years trying to escape debtors. He is staying behind a secret wall, which became jammed and he could not escape. It is a place where the rich can hide if things go bad for them. The Parks did not know of this secret place. The wealthy can afford an escape plan, like a golden parachute. We again have the film’s metaphor that the poor must live below the privileged.

Choong Sook is ready to call the police, not feeling sympathy for one of her fellow impoverished. But Moon-Kwang discovers that the whole Kim family has conned their way into the house and threatens to expose them with a phone video. She and her husband also begin to enjoy the richness of the house, their only chance at the good life together.

The two families fight over the phone. Their struggle shows how the poor are forced to battle each other for what the wealthy have left them. The Parks were washed out of their camping trip by a storm, so the Kims must clean things up so as not to get caught. The Kims now become the captors of their own class in the subterranean compartment. Choong Sook causes Moon-Kwang to fall down the basement stairs and she sustains a severe head injury, and dies after freeing her husband of his bonds.

Mrs. Park tells Choong Sook of the traumatic experience that her son, Da-Song, experienced. He woke up when he was younger in the middle of the night to have more birthday cake and saw Geun-Sae come out of the basement. The child thought he was a ghost. Symbolically, this event may mean that the uncaring wealthy are haunted by the memories of their class victims.

The rich being superior is again displayed metaphorically. The Parks sleep on a couch in the living area to be on call if their son, who decides to have his own camping experience, stays in a tent in the grounds in the back of the house. The Kims are hiding under the furniture, showing that they are beneath the wealthy family. Mr. Park says that he can still smell Mr. Kim, as if the poor are somehow contaminated by their place in society. Mr. Park says that Kim “always seems about to cross the line,” but doesn’t, again using the analogy to show the need for the lower classes to stay in their place. But his smell “crosses the line.” He says, people who ride subways have that smell, as if derived from associating with others of what he would consider to be the working-class subculture.

Choong Sook resides at the house, being the housekeeper, but the other Kims escape (walking through a tunnel, the underground being their place in life).. When they return to their apartment, their home below the surface is flooded, showing how their plans have washed away. Kim comes to believe that plans are meaningless, and he falls into despair. They attempt to save some possessions, and Ki-Woo gets the Scholar’s Rock, which was supposed to represent good fortune. Ironically, it causes just the opposite, and his clinging to it is misplaced hope in this story.

The next day the Parks are preparing for another birthday for their son, and they can afford to host an opulent party. The scene of Mrs. Park going into her spacious walk-in closet contrasts with the impoverished multitudes in the gymnasium who sought shelter from the storm as they rummage through donated clothing. Mr. and Mrs. Park must act as servants. Da-Hye invited Ki-Woo and his sister. Da-Hye and Ki-Woo are kissing in her bedroom. It is above the grounds, looking down at the rich guests. From that height he is temporarily elevated in his status and wonders if he fits in there.

The child Da-Song likes to pretend he is a Native American, and for the party Mr. Kim must pretend to be one also. In this context he is an oppressed person playing the role of a member of another oppressed race. Ki-Woo takes the Scholar’s Stone and descends to kill Geun-Sae so he can’t expose the Kim family. But the man gets the drop on the young man and smashes his head with the stone. At this point Geun-Sae is in a deranged state following the death of his wife, and he seeks revenge on Choong Sook for her death. He wields a knife, killing Ki-Woo’s sister. On seeing a return of the “ghost,” the boy Da-Song faints. Mr. Park demands that Mr. Kim give him the car keys to transport his son for medical care, not showing any concern for the dying Ji-Jeong. Geun-Sae attacks Choong Sook who is able to use a food skewer to kill the man. It is ironic that something used to feed this posh group is now a homicide weapon used against the rich host. So far, the lower-class uprising has only resulted in deaths of those in their own class. But when Mr. Kim sees Park’s disgust of the smell of his family, Mr. Kim loses it and stabs Mr. Park to death.

What happens next is a narration by Ki-Woo which relates that he recovered following brain surgery. He and his mother were put on probation for acting fraudulently, but she is acquitted of Geun-Sae ‘s death for acting in self-defense. Ki-Woo views the Park house from a hill, the only way he can come close to rising to the height to be able to purchase the home. He realizes his father now lives in hiding in the room below the now vacant house because Geun-Sae used the light controls in the room to send out a Morse Code signal, and now so does Ki-Woo’s father. Mr. Kim has moved from one subterranean place to another, replacing another lower-class person in the seemingly never-ending oppression of the poor.

Ki-Woo writes a letter, that the film visualizes, to his father about working hard and becoming wealthy enough to buy the Park mansion so his father will join them. But he composes the letter from the dingy basement apartment in which the story started, suggesting that his hopes will remain only a dream.

Open Your Eyes

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

Open Your Eyes (1997) deals with the theme of illusion versus reality and how individuals can create their own versions of heaven and hell. (The film was remade in English entitled Vanilla Sky, starring Tom Cruise). 

The first words in the film are the title. It is a female voice recorded on the main character’s alarm clock. It is supposed to wake him from his dream. But it also refers to seeing things as they really are. And that is the problem that the protagonist, Cesar (Edwardo Noriega) must address.  

When Cesar takes a shower, the shower door and the bathroom mirror fog up. He must wipe away the moisture on the mirror to see himself. It is symbolic of Cesar trying to see things clearly. He drives in the middle of the day, but the streets are deserted. The film takes us into the surreal even though appearances seem realistic. Cesar is dreaming and then the opening repeats itself, only this time there is a woman in Cesar’s bed, who he is dismissive of. The woman is Nuria (Najwa Nimri), who will become the femme fatale of the story. 

Cesar picks up his friend, Pelayo (Fele Martinez). Through their conversation we learn that Cesar is wealthy and is a playboy who never sees a woman twice (although he did with Nuria). Pelayo says he is unpopular with women as opposed to the handsome Cesar. Cesar says anyone would want to look “normal” like Pelayo. That statement is a bit of foreshadowing. The two are playing racquet ball and Cesar says that God made him miss hitting the ball. 

There is a drastic shift to a scene where Cesar is on the floor wearing a mask and talking to a psychiatrist who asks him if he believes in God. Cesar now says he doesn’t. The psychiatrist, Antonio (Chete Lera), says Cesar will not let him see his face because Cesar wears a mask due to deformity. It is interesting that Antonio says, “I only believe what I see,” which seems to contradict his believing that God caused Cesar’s facial disfigurement. In the context of the movie, what one sees isn’t necessarily believable, as we find later.  

Cesar is in prison because he killed someone. Antonio has been talking to him for two months. Cesar is rich because his parents died in an accident, and he inherited his father’s business fortune. That his parents lost their lives in an accident mirrors what happened to Cesar. Is that what happened or is it a strange coincidence? Cesar has an alternative truth as he says it’s his partners who have railroaded him and are stopping him from attaining his wealth. He says he sits on the floor because it is the only thing that feels real as everything else seems like a lie. He is actually close to the truth here.  

Antonio says Cesar must tell him what happened to him for the psychiatrist to leave him alone. The flashbacks are Cesar telling his story. There is a jump back to his birthday party where Pelayo brings a date, Sofia (Penelope Cruz, who repeats her role in Vanilla Sky). When he goes to his room, he finds Nuria is there even though she was not invited. She tries to seduce him. He leaves and uses Sofia to make Nuria believe that he has moved on. It is a deception, like so much of this film. When he finds out that Sofia is studying to be an actress, he says that actors are liars because “they show emotions” they “don’t have,” and she could be pretending to be friendly to him. So, we have the film, a fictional story, commenting on the invented world of its characters.   

Pelayo is angry because it appears to him that Cesar is putting the moves on Sofia. However, he is very drunk and admits that he may be seeing things. His is actually seeing things clearly and his altered state paradoxically turns out to be a valid way of viewing the situation. Pelayo says that Sofia may be “the girl of my dreams.” It is a statement that is often used, but in the context of this story, it gains resonance because of the ambiguity between reality and dreams. 

When Cesar takes Sofia home, she kids about how her family earns money as arms dealers. It’s another fiction as they play with what is real and not. They draw pictures of each other. Sofia’s is a caricature, which is an exaggeration of reality, while Cesar’s is an accurate depiction of reality. This action again shows the theme of the film, and makes a comment about making movies. They see an ad om the TV about cryonics, which becomes an important issue in the story, dealing with freezing people after they die so they can then be awakened when their bodies can be treated for whatever caused their deaths. He admits in his narration to the psychiatrist that he felt love for Sofia, something new for him. 

Nuria convinces him to go for a ride. In her desperation due to his lack of caring for her she drives the car over an embankment and into a wall. The next scene finds Cesar walking up to Sofia in a park and he says the incident with Nuria and the car crash was a dream. However, he can’t remember his party, and we realize this meeting with Sofia is a dream. What is real and what is a dream seems to be what the film is asking. We are in The Matrix territory here. What supposedly happened was that Nuria died and the handsome face of Cesar was disfigured. He had been in a coma for three weeks and he says that the doctors couldn’t fix his face and gave him the mask he now wears as he talks to the psychiatrist. Antonio insists that Cesar is in denial, and that if he takes off the mask he will realize the doctors fixed his face.  

Cesar has a memory of driving and seeing Sofia after the accident and Sofia appeared to have a mask on which reflects what happened to him. But she is really dressed like a mime. She is in actress mode, appearing as something she is not. More deceptive appearances. She is panhandling and when the rain washes away her makeup, she is still playing a part according to Cesar. He says her smile is phony. She says she didn’t contact him because he would feel uncomfortable in his deformed state. He says she is the one who is uncomfortable. What is the truth? He says he had a dream that they would meet like this. Again, the dream state is evoked, and it turns out to be a fitting reference.

At a bar he meets Pelayo and Sofia. He is wearing his mask, but Pelayo says he can’t hide his face. Does that mean he can’t hide who he really is, an egocentric person. Has he been a monster inside even though his appearance was lovely before? He places the mask so it faces his back. He appears to be two-faced, a phony. Outside, however, he tells Pelayo he is his best friend, which seems sincere. Sofia first leaves and then Sofia, and Cesar falls asleep on the pavement. This is an important dividing point in the story.

When he wakes up he thinks he sees Nuria, but when he looks again, it is Sofia, and she is caring, and kisses him. Again, what is really happening? The next scene has Cesar back in the psychiatric penitentiary where Antonio looks at his drawings of Sofia. Cesar says never in his worst nightmares did he envision being in a place like the mental institution. The word “nightmare” is the negative side of the dream state, but it is just as false as a nice dream. Antonio asks him about another dream, and he says he was in an office he never visited, signing papers. He then says his doctors found a “miracle” cure, miracle being something out of the usual state of reality. He says it seemed like science fiction, which is what this film is, and the way things happen in a movie, which is what the audience is experiencing. Stories are fiction that reflect on reality, but are not real.

The doctors are successful, and Cesar and Sofia are together, and he and Pelayo are friends. But Cesar has another dream, and he sees that his face is still disfigured. Real or imaginary? He is in bed with Sofia he believes, but it turns out to be Nuria, who says she is Sofia. He ties her up and she says she never was in a car accident. Is he dreaming again, or has he been dreaming all along? Or is he insane? The police say that the girl he thinks is Sofia exists in his imagination, not in real life.

A man that he has seen on TV in the Life Extension ads confronts Cesar and tells him he is dreaming. He says the people in the bar are at his control, but they can destroy him if he gives into his demons. When he says he just wants the people to be quiet, there is silence. He tells this story to the psychiatrist, who hypnotizes him. In this dream state he recalls that he signed a contract after which he took pills. When he wakes up from the hypnosis he says he didn’t take any medications and that it was a dream, and he can tell the difference between reality and a dream. We know he can’t, nor can we at this point in the story.

He tells Antonio that he went to Sofia’s apartment. One minute the woman there is Nuria but then turns back into the Sofia he remembers. They make love, but during the lovemaking she turns back into Nuria. He says that he put a pillow over her face and suffocated her. In a mirror he sees his reflection which shows his deformed face. Mirrors, as has been noted elsewhere on this blog, often refer to another part of an individual’s personality.

The psychiatrist believes that Cesar is deranged and that he needs further treatment in the hospital. In the ward he again sees the representative from Life Extension, Duvernois (Gerard Barray). Cesar realizes he has been calling someone Eli in his memory, but it stands for L.E, Life Extension. He gets Antonio to take him to an L.E. office, which he has seen in his dreams. The representative there tells him that a person is frozen and can be revived in the future when there will be medical procedures to correct the fatal problem. There are options that can maintain the brain in a virtual reality which is controlled by the individual. Cesar questions what happens if the dream turns into a nightmare? Is that scenario what’s happening to Cesar?

Caesar says he is in a dream, but Antonio says that then the psychiatrist doesn’t exist, and that Cesar is being delusionary. It’s his dilemma, to try to understand what is his reality. He takes the mask off, and we see what he sees, that his face is still disfigured. He says he wants to wake up, struggles with a guard, gets his gun and shoots people. Antonio also gets shot, but suffers no effects. Cesar sees someone at the top of the building. Up there is Duvernois who says that everything after he woke up from sleeping in the street was his dream. He never saw Sofia again, became despondent, signed the Life Extension contract 150 years ago and committed suicide by taking pills. He created Antonio to help him understand what was happening to him. Sofia appears and so does Pelayo. Duvernois says they are just characters Cesar created from his memories and imagination, just like the filmmakers of this movie did. He has a choice: he can try to set his dream onto a happier course or end it. Medical knowledge now exists to correct his disfigurement. However, he must die in his dream world by jumping off the building to wake from his virtual reality. His face is no longer deformed as he stands on the edge of the building. He jumps from the building. The screen goes black, and we hear the female voice again saying, “Open your eyes.”

Was Cesar delusional or did he really live in an artificial dream state? Do we have the courage to face the truth about our lives or pretend to believe in a different version of the truth? These are the questions posed by this film.

The Parallax View

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

The Parallax View (1974), directed by Alan J. Pakula, mirrors some elements we find in Alfred Hitchcock’s films. There are deaths at the Seattle Space Needle, which is an iconic American landmark. Hitchcock showed treachery occurring at the Statue of Liberty in Saboteur and at Mt. Rushmore in North by Northwest. The point of using these types of settings for Hitchcock was to suggest that there is a sinister aspect below the admirable surface representation. However, Pakula said in an interview that he wanted to show how modern structures dwarf individual citizens. In a way, the larger structures show how powerful forces can dominate the less fortunate. Hitchcock also used the theme of those in power blaming an innocent man for wrongs he did not commit, and that individual tries to discover the truth below a surface of lies. This element also exists in this story.

The word “parallax” adds to the theme of seeing things from various perspectives. The word means that a variety of people can see the same situation in different ways. In the case of the main character, Joseph Frady (Warren Beatty), a journalist, he is an outsider who views the world as something to analyze below the surface of appearances. Others see him as an anti-establishment type, someone outside the mainstream. The fact that he is a recovering alcoholic adds to his outsider status. His name suggests the word “afraid.” Is he afraid of what’s happening, or is he, too, someone to be afraid of.

The opening sequence shows a totem pole with the Space Needle behind it to show how society has minimized a meaningful culture by replacing it with impersonal materialism. Senator Carroll (William Boyce) is in a parade wearing a fireman’s hat, a symbol of unselfish heroism. Inside the Space Needel one waiter appears to be the assassin of a senator while another waiter is the actual killer. This scene stresses how things are not what they seem. Both Frady and his ex-girlfriend, Lee Carter (Paula Prentiss), are there. The innocent man falls to his death as others wrongfully assume he is the culprit, and he falls to his death after a pursuit. What follows is a commission that declares there was a lone gunman. The declaration is not a press conference, so there are no questions, stressing how no contradictions will be voiced against the conclusion that there was no conspiracy. This element of the film reminds us of the Warren Commission which said there was no conspiracy in the killing of President John F. Kennedy. It also refers to similar findings that were made in the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Senator Carroll is an independent politician who may want to run for a higher office. IMDb notes that his name is the same as a signer of The Declaration of Independence, the last word there mirroring the senator’s nonpartisan status. His link to the Declaration paints him as a patriot like those at the pristine birth of American democracy. The fact that the opening takes place on Independence Day stresses Carroll’s “independence” and ironically contrasts with those defiling the tenets of the Founding Fathers.

Three years pass since the death of the senator, and we are witness to Frady’s anti-establishment combativeness. He argues and insults local policemen following his manipulation of an inept arrest where he exposes how they harass him. Frady’s newspaper editor, Bill Rintels (Hume Cronyn), tells Frady he must “curb your talent for creative irresponsibility,” and that they are “in the business of reporting the news, not creating it.” The scene emphasizes Frady’s rebellious nature. Rintel’s office looks like an old-fashioned modest space, which he never seems to leave, not gleaming like a modern press headquarters. Pakula said Rintels is an “anachronism,” a man dedicated to “old-fashioned decency and optimism.” He seems to be someone who is isolated from the current society that has moved away from those values.

Lee has tried to contact Frady and shows up at his home by way of a side entrance, stressing her fear, which she reveals to Frady. She says that eight people have died who were at the event at the top of the Space Needle. She believes they were killed, and she could be next. Frady dismisses Lee’s fear because she is a neurotic who apparently had paranoid and suicidal thoughts in the past. He does learn that there have been two more deaths, and that Carroll’s aid, Austin Tucker (William Daniels) also believes there is a conspiracy.

The next scene is chilling as there is a shot of Lee’s body at the coroner’s building. She had alcohol and barbiturates in her system and died in a car accident. Frady is the last one to come into view through the doorway, which is the audience’s viewpoint, stressing the different ways things are seen, and we can see that he now believes there is something suspicious about the piling up of bodies.

Frady meets with Will (Kenneth Mars), an ex-FBI agent, who says that there is a pill that can fake a heart attack, which is how one of the persons in Seattle scene died. This fact is a foreshadowing of what happens later. Frady says he needs a fake backstory that shows him as a “hostile misfit.” Will says Frady doesn’t have to fake that. Again, we see that Frady, in his own way, fits the profile of those he is hunting. Will says they will set him up to be a man who was once a flasher so as to present him as a person with an embarrassing past to hide, which is the kind of person an organization grooming assassins might recruit. The two are at an amusement park and ride on a children’s train. Could the film be suggesting Frady is on the right track?

Frady visits the place in upstate Washington where a witness to the senator’s death died. He does not look like the locals since he has long shaggy hair and orders milk at a local bar where the male patrons dress like cowboys. A man named Red (Earl Hindman, eventually Wilson in the TV show Home Improvement) questions his masculinity. Unfortunately, Frady must prove his male strength and gets into a fight, eventually knocking out Red, who turns out to be a deputy. Sheriff Wicker (Kelly Thorsden) is one of the patrons, allowing the fight to continue. As Frady says he has a strange way of enforcing the law. The town is outside the mainstream idea of what normally stands for justice, and Frady is the outsider again here, showing his aggressive nature.

The conspiracy widens in the scene where the sheriff takes Frady to the spot below a dam where the witness died. The hugeness of the dam adds to that feeling of individuals overpowered by their surroundings. It was reported as a drowning since the dam sluice opened and the victim drowned. Then the alarm sounds which warns that the sluice is opening again and Frady realizes he will be the next victim. Luckily (a bit of contrivance) Frady has a fishing rod and he hits the sheriff who is pulling a gun, which is how he presumably killed the witness. They are both swept away. Frady survives, but not the sheriff. So, even local law enforcement is part of the deadly apparatus that lurks behind the façade of respectability. (This scene is a bit much since it would seem pretty suspicious that two witnesses to the senator’s death would have died in the same manner at the same location).

Frady goes to the sheriff’s house and discovers a briefcase that provides information about the Parallax Corporation. He escapes the pursuing Red in the sheriff’s police car which he used to get to the house. It is interesting that he must escape the shady local lawman in a car belonging to an officer of the law. Frady is even wearing the cop’s cowboy hat. He drives through an area that spews mud on the car and himself, implying that justice has been defiled. The images add irony to the scene.

Back in Portland, Rintels doesn’t buy Frady’s story, since he reveals that the sheriff and deputy were involved in a utility scandal and that is why they were hostile. Frady said he didn’t reveal he was a reporter and used a fake name. Rintels refuses to help Frady, which adds to the journalist’s isolation.

The briefcase contains psychological testing questions, which Frady brings to a psychology lab. The psychologist says the questions seek “to pull out anger, repression, frustration” which could identify homicidal tendencies. The psychologist has a man who committed gruesome crimes take the test. Frady wants to pretend the answers are his so he can infiltrate the Parallax Company. Apparently, the only way to enter a deceptive organization is by being deceptive.

The depth of the danger facing people who suspect the truth about the recent deaths manifests itself in the person of Autin Tucker, the dead senator’s aid. He learns about Frady’s search for him. He requires Frady to undergo a strip search before meeting him. He warns him that he is unaware of the enormity of the deadly investigation he is pursuing since he has escaped two attempts on his own life. At the dam and here, we have foreshadowing of what can happen to Frady. Tucker, a bodyguard, and Frady go out on a boat. In the water, alone, one would think it was a safe place. Not so. There is an explosion on the vessel, and again, Frady happens luckily to be at the bow of the ship and is blown free. The scene shows how pervasive is the reach of this conspiracy.

Frady revisits Rintels, who thinks the reporter died on the boat. Rintels is onboard with Frady’s news story now, but Frady doesn’t want to print anything yet so he can find out more. He wants to make it look like he did die so as to call off any further scrutiny. He asks Rintels to print his obituary, make a fake will, and appear to be clearing out Frady’s personal property. In the meantime, Frady will take on a false identity under the name of Richard Paley, the man who supposedly answered the Parallax questionnaire, and a potential assassin. He is putting himself in jeopardy, but also Rintels, since he is the only one who knows the truth, which is supposed to set you free, but, in this world, can get one killed.

Frady takes a room in a rundown building to show his outsider status as Paley. When a representative, Jack Younger (Walter McGinn) of Parallax shows up, Frady acts surly and angry when his pot on a hotplate overheats. Younger says it’s his aggressiveness is what makes Paley valuable. Is Frady putting on an act, or is he just unleashing his inner antisocial tendencies?

Frady goes to the address where Parallax does its recruiting. He visits the “Division of Human Engineering.” It’s an ominous title, implying that they can remake individuals into something other than what they currently are. What follows is an almost an extended surreal scene. Frady goes to a large auditorium (that dwarfing feeling again) where there is just one chair which measures his emotional responses to the images projected through his fingers. Words such as “country,” “love” and “enemy” appear with images of people suffering and imprisoned along with patriotic pictures accompanied by rousing as well as soft music. Also, there are still shots of a KKK rally, Hitler, and violent pictures along with an illustration of a comic superhero. The word that appears often is “Me.” The visuals seem to connect patriotism and family love with the individual’s ability to conquer adversaries. It is interesting that we do not gain any knowledge of Frady’s response to these images. Does he actually qualify as a person who fits in with the parallax view of those who will hire him? Here again we have a Hitchcock element since the audience is made to participate in the scene just as does Frady. In his essay, “Dark Towers,” Nathan Heller says that Pakula uses the camera as a “human” who “feels like a bystander.” So, in effect, we also are taking the test.

An effective suspenseful segment follows. Frady sees the man who Tucker showed him a picture of who was at the Space Needle. He was the actual second gunman who killed Senator Carroll. Frady follows the man, who has acquired a briefcase, to the airport. The man checks in the briefcase but doesn’t get on the plane. Frady boards the plane and hears that there is a senator on the plane who the newspaper compares to Carroll. Frady realizes the briefcase contains a bomb. Frady is able to warn a flight attendant anonymously by writing on a cocktail napkin that there is an explosive onboard. The plane turns around based on “technical difficulties” to avoid a panic. After the plane lands and everyone disembarks, the plane explodes. Frady performed a daring and courageous act here.

Younger is at Frady’s apartment when he returns. The man is in the dark mirroring his shady personality. He knows that Paley is not his name based on background checks. Frady makes up a story about hiding his alcoholic past. He is supposed to meet another operative at a hotel, but once more Frady sabotages another job Parallax is planning by sending his supposed associate away. We know Parallax is onto Frady because they send that same assassin to bring Rintels poisoned food which he regularly orders from a deli. They make it look like the editor died of a heart attack, as did a previous victim. More appearances being deceptive. The audiotape of the conversation with Younger that Frady sent Rintels along with other Parallax documents are gone. Frady doesn’t know about the death and that he is now on his own.

Frady goes to see Younger at the Parallax building. The man is not there but Frady sees the same waiter/assassin in the lobby. He follows him again, this time to the LA Convention Center. The large open area, said Pakula, was meant to seem uninviting and menacing, which fits in with the spatial intimidation theme of the story. What Frady doesn’t realize, and what the viewer doesn’t suspect at this point, is that he is being set up. Younger and other suited men are there as they observe from a room high above the floor below, like demonic angels watching their plans take shape. Younger leaves, absent from, and seemingly innocent of, the treachery that follows.

There is a college marching band rehearsing patriotic songs among a multitude of tables. On the floor students show placards of various past presidents. It’s almost a reminder of what Frady saw at the Parallax human engineering site. What will follow is anything but traditional patriotism.

The killer along with other assassins are on a platform above the proceedings below. Senator Hammond (Jim Davis) rides in on a golf cart as he is part of the rehearsal for a speech he will deliver that night. Frady is on a catwalk above the floor. He probably realizes that the senator is the next target. Sure enough, as the senator drives his golf car away from the stage, shots ring out and he is killed. The senator’s golf cart careens into the red, white, and blue tables, symbolizing the destruction of the patriotic scene.

The assassins planted a rifle to implicate Frady as the shooter. The band members see Frady and point at him, assuming he is the killer. It is the same setup that occurred at the Space Needle. As Frady runs toward a door to escape he is shot to death by an assassin who is masquerading as a security guard.

We again have an investigative panel that concludes that Frady killed Hammond. They state that Frady was obsessed with the Carroll shooting, thought Senator Hammond was responsible for the other senator’s death, and that he felt Hammond was out to kill Frady. Again, there are no questions from an unseen press, which implies that even they are impotent to stop the coverup. The lone gunman theory with no conspiracy decision is again presented, with history repeating itself, as it did with the Kennedy and King assassinations. The feeling that all of these decisions are linked is stressed by the camera zooming in on the commission members at the first panel and now the camera pulling away at the second commission, as if it is all one shot taking place at the same time.

The depressing ending concludes this cautionary tail of how even in a supposed open and free society, there can be a deceptive underbelly lurking beneath the benign appearing surface. (For conspiracy theorists, the actor who played Younger (McGinn) died in a car accident in 1977, and director Pakula died in an auto accident in 1998).