Something irresistible is pulling at you. The music opens up on a certain chord, you’re taken in, swept along, and even moved by it. “You might expect to hear ‘official’ sounding music in this type of scene,” Small told Music from the Movies in 1998, but “here there is a strange and ominous tone to it. Small’s dominant idea for this tale of nationally sponsored murder is a “skewered anthem,” which he introduces after the iconic Space Needle assassination as the camera closes in on an imposing committee reading their Warren-like report inside a vast, dark room. A recurring motif is two simple notes, played on a Fender Rhodes piano, descending a minor ninth interval-almost a perfect octave, but just askew. The score forces you to lean in and pay attention, telling you in a whisper that something isn’t right. Small’s music, written for a small ensemble and sparsely but surgically placed, complements Gordon Willis’s inky photography it’s obscured and deceptively minimal, but there are depths in the shadows. The Parallax View is arguably Small’s masterpiece, and perhaps Pakula’s, and it offers the most potent brew of their unique chemistry. “It is relentless in its anxiety, but because the music is melodic, it’s also seductive.” Robot and Homecoming, his small-screen nods to ’70s paranoia thrillers. “It’s one of the best-edited sequences in cinematic history,” says Sam Esmail, who used several pieces of Small’s film music in Mr. The Parallax Test concludes on the word “Happiness.” Finally, the music returns to that reassuring male voice humming over Americana strings and photos of a smiling boy, a pastoral countryside, and the founding fathers. The music morphs into a cross between Burt Bacharach–style light pop and acid rock, lit with wailing organ and electric guitar, as it underscores pictures of Nazis, Thor, BDSM men with their asses out, red meat, the White House, the KKK, breasts, bullets, and graves. Then the film gives way to an epileptic barrage of violent, sexual, and racist images juxtaposed with the calm country photos. As the imagery turns overtly patriotic, the music does too, with flag-waving brass harmonies and snare drums. It could almost be the instrumental of a Carpenters song, with a male voice-reportedly Small’s own-humming along. It starts out like a ’70s folk-rock tune, an oboe melody rambling down a country road of acoustic guitar. This stunning experimental short film is accompanied-driven, even-by a dangerously catchy piece by the film’s composer, Michael Small. Pakula’s The Parallax View, the lights go down on our movie and we’re shown another-an increasingly deranged propaganda short designed to suss out whether someone is Parallax material.
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