In short, it was a hugely commercial enterprise that, through a combination of serendipity, headstrong ambition, and opportunistic abandon, managed to tap this mother lode of disquietude. At the same time, every actor looks to be having a blast, even while convincingly essaying the grimmest fates this side of the inferno. Everything about The Manchurian Candidate is continually, subtly shifting between brightly illuminated, diamond-edged spaces and fifty-seven darkening shades of gray. From sneaky satire to unbearable tragedy, fist-in-the-face bluntness to elusive, whispery insinuation, the entire movie is bathed in an acidic, wholehearted glow of contraction.
Instead of staking out one
position or discourse and then pivoting to its opposite, Frankenheimer’s
film dedicates itself to the sensation of American reality in a
permanent state of flux (not to mention emergency). Placing the macabre
in the service of the everyday, the director and Axelrod take the
material—assorted eccentric speech patterns and aberrant behaviors and
garroted plot twists—and render it as tough, mordant Americanized
poetry. Here you can’t tell the difference between Joe Stalin and Joe
McCarthy without a scorecard, or at least the playing cards from the
movie’s “little game of solitaire.” (Or are they actually tarot cards in
disguise?) https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/3970-the-manchurian-candidate-dread-center
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