1 Murder Is still ors" the Constitution requires for an nourishment; they remain the most treas- the tie that binds impeachment conviction, what high ured set-pieces of our last collective crime could possibly be left? Only mur- folklore. Commissions may come and go By Frank Rich der. Even the White House realizes that talking of rash gunmen acting on their killing—at least the killing of someone own, but we continue to turn the facts If it were not for a faith in con- white who has bad his or her name in the over in our minds, clinging to alternative paper—is a crime to which the entire spiracies, real or imagined, I wonder if explanations for the tragedies, looking anything would hold these United States country can still relate. If Nixon were to for the conspiracies that can provide the reveal such a deed, he wouldn't have to logic we crave as a society. Not that any of America together. In a land where the joker with a nefarious plot to peddle can daily motions of our lives defy any no- drop another shoe. We'd have a conspir- automatically win his way into our tion of rationality—whether we are buy- acy of a piece with all the others, a tie hearts. Surely, for instance, no one has ing inflationary meat in a supermarket, that would bind us all together; we could smoking "lemon menthol" cigarettes or look to the Bicentennial as a celebration much use for Mark Lane anymore, that of union rather than a funeral of frac- man who is blessed with the singular watching Hollywood Squares on tele- tionalized despair. vision—it becomes a psychological ne- talent of making second-gun theories Such a happy ending is, at this boring. Last fall a fictional movie based cessity that we try to make sense out of writing, elusive, and, in lieu of evidence on his JFK-assassination theories, the the big front-page events of our common that Nixon instructed Dita Beard to experience. Given the stuff of which his- David Miller-Dalton Trumbo Executive plant a bomb on Mrs. Howard Hunt's Action, put people asleep from coast to tory has been made during the past 15 years—the Kennedy and King assassina- plane or once employed Donald coast. (Similarly, a strident film docu- tions, the Vietnam war, the ascendancy DeFreeze as a valet, we must fall back on mentary on Bobby's demise, The Second of Richard Nixon—it becomes clear that the two Kennedy assassinations for Gun, died quietly on the box-office vine.) only conspiracies can explain all the gro- tesqueries away. We erect and cling to vast, convoluted webs of villainy and deceit much the way the French once placed their hope in cathedrals. Conspiracies are the opiate of the people, both on the left (whose grim analysis of the origins of Vietnam was validated by The Pentagon Papers) and on the right (which actually conspired to manufacture conspiracies, like the "Chi- cago 7," so that the public would be able to rationalize and punish antiwar dem- onstrators). But some conspiracies are better than others, with the best of all being those that involve murder, espe- cially the murder of Americans of some celebrity. (If you haven't figured out why the Ellsberg foreign-policy revelations had such a short media shelf-life, it's because a plot to murder Asians thou- sands of miles away just doesn't have that "down home" appeal.) Let's face it, Watergate itself won't completely galva- nize the proverbial Peones of our society until that moment if and when the Nixon administration can be linked inextri- cably to some (literally) deadly crime of the century. Indeed, that's what the Pres- ident's legal defense is all about: since James St. Clair has made it perfectly clear that neither obstruction of justice nor breaking and entering nor any other known executive malfeasance can qual- The always electric Warren Beatty as an Investigative journalist in Pakiaa's ify as the "high crimes and misdemean- The Parallax View. 1-,71 7 ] f G ZisTRIB,JT\ 01,1 SS NEW TIMES THIS Fi • C-) Tj g- uQ CT Czoffne._ izZ, \Jt EV/S 11.1117FM, And yet if someone can come along and the loyalty of antisocial people," and climax, which by definition sets up the serve up the familiar elements of our Paula Prentiss as a neurotic newswomtui expectation of a sniping, does seem ghoulish dreams with freshness and who at one point assures the hero that uninspired, no matter how much the two pizazz, in the form of either entertain- she "has never killed [herself] success- films' resolutions may differ. (Coinci- ment or journalism, it behooves us to ftdly." dentally, Richard Condon, from whose line up at his door. That, I believe, will My complaint about The Paral- novel that earlier cold-war gem was be the case with The Parallax View, a lax View, and I do have a serious one, adapted, has written a fabulous new classy if not exactly brilliant slab of as- transcends matters that pertain to a few thriller, Winter Kills, about a JFK-breed sassination suspense-drama that is direc- gnawing details that at times threaten to assassination after which some witnesses tor Alan Pakula's first thriller since undermine the movie's overall credi- die, etc., etc.. Are we in the midst of a Kluft. bility. I'm more concerned about the literary conspiracy here, too?) Working from a screenplay by promise of the film's guiding metaphor, In any case, I doubt that these David Oiler and Lorenzo Semple Jr. that of the title itself, which implies an criticisms will matter to most audiences (from a novel by Loren Singer), Pakula approach to the material that Pakula who elect to see The Parallax View. builds his movie on a premise so familiar doesn't always bring off. While the word Though it lacks the breadth of those we can taste it: a RFK-style senator is "parallax" (a noun, not an adjective, by great thrillers to which we can return shot during a campaign appearance . the way) aptly sums up the radical shift again and again even after we know how a distinguished, grey-haired panel of in perspective we get on the film's final the ending turns out, this drawback will heavies decrees the deed the work of a scene through its smashingly ironic out- only have a bearing on the movie's for- mad-dog assassin (a busboy) who was come, Pakula doesn't consistently rein- tunes at that time when our nonfiction not a part of "any wider conspiracy" . force his work's ambiguity (and thus its conspiracies outstrip it; when that hap- three years later a hip investigative re- suspense) along the way. In The Parallax pens, all but the best intrigue entertain- porter (Warren Beatty), the kind who View, everybody is pretty much whom ments will be obsolete. Meanwhile, until wears his chutzpah like a badge, realizes they appear to be, and the crucial ques- the stain of blood spills over Watergate, that a lot of witnesses have died under tion of the story boils down to who is or until we find a missing link that chains mysterious circumstances and sets out to going to do what to whom and do it first. all our conspiracies together (I'm hoping crack the case. Although there's nothing What's missing is some equivalent to the that Richard Nixon and Jack Ruby were new about this basic plan—which is tape recording of Coppola's The Conver- fraternity brothers at Whittier College smartly unloaded in the film's first five sation (still the best conspiratorial myself), a movie like The Parallax View minutes—the story soon takes off in ex- thriller, indeed the best thriller of any can go a long way toward keeping the plosive directions; Pakula detonates a variety, so far this year) or to the charac- home fires burning. series of loud and colorful narrative fire- ters played by Eva Marie Saint and Kim crackers (involving everything from Novak in Hitchcock movies like North Le Peat Theatre de Jean Re- bomb scares to raging floods) that only by Northwest and Vertigo—evidence or noir, which was made for French tele- someone as jaded as Gordon Liddy people or objects that we can view and vision in 1969 when its creator was 75, is could fail to eat up. review at constantly shifting angles the purest distillation imaginable of a At the glorious center of the con- throughout the film. Pakula's climax is a sensibility I have no hesitation about spiracy that Pakula gradually unfolds is jolt, all right, but it snaps rather than calling the greatest in the history of mov- a mysterious corporation (financed by resonates: it's an ending that wraps up ies. indeed the aesthetic air of this "little ITT? the CIA? the USSR? the UN?—it and elucidates some of the movie's last- theater" is so rarefied that audiences doesn't make any difference) that per- hour events, but it's not a window unfamiliar with the rest of Renoir's ca- forms a most distasteful service for its through which we might examine many reer may find it a bit baffling. Like the clients. It would be cruel of me to indi- of the characters and practically the en- late films of other masters of the me- cate here exactly what the business of tire drama in a wholly new and startling dium— Hitchcock's Topaz, Chaplin's A that faceless organization is, but,suffice it light.