The Parallax View: remember when Hollywood made potent political cinema?
Watching Hollywood cinema in 2026 can make for a curious experience.Take a look out the window and you’ll notice that the US, and indeed the world, is in a polycrisis – though you’d hardly know it from the films at the multiplex.The odd timely picture aside, Hollywood today directly engages with the present moment only rarely; more Minecraft Movie than One Battle After Another.In the 70s, when things were arguably last in a comparably sorry state – Kent State, Vietnam and Watergate for the US, economic crises and violent acts of world revolution globally – popular cinema responded very differently.Out of the establishment-sceptical New Hollywood that emerged after the demise of the Hays code, there came a wave of confronting social and political dramas, strongly allegorical sci-fi and paranoid thrillers, including one of the most deliriously entertaining examples of the latter ever made: The Parallax View.
It plays like an airport novel that’s been deep-fried in conspiracy theories and post-counterculture cynicism.While investigating the murder of an RFK-like presidential hopeful, reporter Joe Frady (Warren Beatty) discovers that a mysterious corporation, Parallax, is operating seemingly in league with or even above the government, recruiting political assassins through psychological tests with shades of mind control experiments like the CIA’s MKUltra.Along the way, our hero survives explosive acts of terrorism, has a run-in with a murderous bent cop and gets into a fistfight with a good ol’ boy.It’s a potent brew that puts all the anxieties and tensions of the day into a blender.Using its pulp mystery plot as a Trojan horse, The Parallax View takes a good, hard look at the US in the Nixon age, and the roots of the corruption, aggression and malaise that defined the country.
The film abounds in images rich with suggestion: sparkling pageants and towering US landmarks framed alongside totem poles, tacky Tiki trinkets and US frontier iconography.The point is crystallised in the film’s disturbing centrepiece montage, the Parallax training film, in which images of smiling Americans and sunlit farmsteads, of presidents and Uncle Sam are contrasted with pictures of police brutality and lynched bodies, of atrocity in Vietnam and beyond: the US built on violence at home and abroad.In every frame, The Parallax View challenges the apple pie myth of the US.Cinematographer Gordon Willis drowns the film’s parade of Americana in sinister shadow, or shoots it in the visual language of fascist cinema – the compositions precise, and the characters made to appear almost insignificant next to imposingly vast structures – as though this were the US viewed through the diseased lens of Leni Riefenstahl herself.It’s hard to imagine that Hollywood could again plug into the moment and offer up the kind of penetrating commentary that it so freely did in the New Hollywood era, at least not soon.
US studios today produce relatively little mid-budget cinema – traditionally Hollywood’s home for stories for adults and about contemporary concerns – as they instead court dwindling audiences with reheated IP and broad-appeal blockbusters,Many of Hollywood’s power players seem set on appeasing the current US administration,Paramount, the studio that made The Parallax View, is now owned by Hollywood’s chief Trump supplicant, David Ellison, whose moves to suppress critical voices and pander to the president bode ill for US cinema, should he succeed in taking over Warner Bros next,Thankfully, we still have The Parallax View – a relic of a different kind of US cinema, and a film made for another turbulent period in history, perhaps, but all the same a film frazzled by conspiracy theories and soaked in the threat of political violence, with bubbling fascism, the erosion of democracy in an increasingly corporate age and America’s legacy of brutality all on its mind,A film, then, which still speaks to us in 2026, as it spoke to audiences who looked to the film to help process the moment five decades ago.
The Parallax View is available to rent in Australia, the UK and the US,For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here
Thoran and chaat: Romy Gill’s Indian-style asparagus recipes
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It’s ‘Gut Coachella’ for Nicholas Jordan and friends, who blind taste a line-up of 20 shredded and fermented cabbage productsIf you value our independent journalism, we hope you’ll consider supporting us todayGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailI cannot tell you how many times I’ve been introduced to a fatty, salty hunk of meat and thought, “my god, I’m going to need a pickle”. I feel the same eating cheese toasties or deli sandwiches with rich mayo-based sauces. Where is the pickle, hot sauce, citrus or ferment? Even the most savoury, juicy slab of umami is a bit much without acidity to balance it.What is the point of sauerkraut without acidity? It’s just wet, salty cabbage, and what is that for, other than deflating my spirits and inflating my gastrointestinal system? Sauerkraut should be sour; it’s the hallmark of the very thing that created it – fermentation.Why am I saying all this? After eight friends and I tasted 21 supermarket sauerkrauts, I was shocked to find some lacked not just acidity but any vigour at all
Fears for spears: how to cook asparagus without blanching | Kitchen aide
I always blanch asparagus, but how else can I cook it?Joe, via email“Blanching captures that green, verdant nature of asparagus so well, and saves its minerality, too,” agrees Bart Stratfold of Timberyard in Edinburgh, but when the season is going full tilt, it’s just common sense to expand our horizons. For Billy Stock, chef/owner of the Wellington in Margate, that means salads, especially with spears that are really fresh: “Use a peeler to shave thin strips off the raw asparagus, and use them in a delicious variation on salade Niçoise.”Another approach would be the grill, Stratfold says: “Coat the spears in rapeseed oil, then grill on an excruciatingly high heat for just a few seconds, until they develop some char.” After that, he rolls them in a tray of vinegar or preserves: “At the restaurant, that’s usually sweet pickled elderflower and elderflower vinegar.”Joe could even abandon the kitchen altogether
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For me, it isn’t really spring until the first May bank holiday; the days are longer, the flowers are out, and an abundance of green graces our shelves. This spanakopita orzo is a celebration of all things light, bright and spring. It’s a great weeknight dinner that will instantly transport you to Greece.This dish should be oozy, like a good risotto, so if your orzo absorbs all the stock, add a little more hot water to give it that requisite creamy finish.Prep 15 minCook 25 min Serves 425g butter 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra to serve1 bunch spring onions, trimmed and sliced2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely sliced220g baby leaf spinach, chopped1
Spring soup and bean and cheese quesadillas: Thomasina Miers’ Mexican-inspired seasonal recipes
I have always loved the evident (though not proven) link between how foodie a country is and its love of soups. In Mexico, where nose-to-tail eating is a given, broths maintain a steadying presence in any self-respecting cantina, and soups are commonplace on most menus. We don’t eat a crazy amount of meat at home, but having homemade stock in the freezer is an ingenious fast track to flavour and goodness. Here, whether your stock is chicken or vegetable, homemade or shop-bought, the joy is in the gentle spicing, a scattering of herbs, zingy tomatillos and some lovely spring leaves.There are so many different herbs in Mexico that are impossible to find here, so I’ve used bundles of more common soft herbs to try to capture the lovely breadth of flavour in this soup
How to make the perfect Spanish broad bean stew – recipe | Felicity Cloake's How to make the perfect …
I always feel sorry for broad beans, the lumpy cousin perpetually overshadowed by the charms of slender, elegant asparagus and sweet, bouncy, little peas. They’re in season at roughly the same time, but asparagus in particular gets all the glory, perhaps because so many of us are scarred by childhood experiences of large, grey wrinkly beans served in a floury white sauce (my own parents are so averse to the things that I vividly remember the first time I came across them on a Sunday roast as a teenager and had to ask a friend what they were).The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more
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