This film had a really fun style. Among its most adventurous elements: the surreal courtroom/panel of mysterious authority figures scenes; the unusually prolific wide lens; and of course, the montage. Personally, I'm a sucker for a wide lens. It is important to be aware of the inherent abstractions involved in using a wide lens - especially a very wide lens, but The Parallax View was well served by those abstractions. The central theme of the movie seems to be that nothing in this world - Parallax's world - is as it seems.
While I found the movie entertaining and thought provoking I thought that it fell short on some of the key criteria of the genre. However, before I launch into a hypercritical evaluation of what I mean by that last statement, I should qualify "fall short" as "not among the very best of all examples, past and present." For example, I recently went to go see Scorsese's Shutter Island and I found it superior in the "who-do-you-trust dilema," that is a hallmark of the conspiracy genre. While The Parallax View featured periods of sustained tension, overall it was less effective in that respect than All The President's Men or The Fugitive. On the other hand, this film is very effective when it comes to providing questions such as: Is this real? Is this not real? Could this really be going on?
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