The Manchurian Candidate

I've just finished watching John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate. I think I will need to watch it again to really comprehend it. Right now, it feels hugely important, massively prophetic and incredibly mysterious.

For those of you that don't know the story, it is that of Raymond Shaw (played by a manic/catatonic Laurence Harvey), a US soldier who is given the Congressional Medal of Honor for his service in Korea, for rescuing his troop and leading them to safety through enemy lines. But something's not right. Frank Sinatra's Major Ben Marco keeps having these recurring dreams where he has been captured along with his unit (including Shaw) by the Russians and Chinese, who are experimenting on them with hypnosis. They want to create the perfect assassin...

I shan't spoil the story because it unfolds so unremittingly, so quietly suspensefully, and because it's such a good film. It was released in 1962, a year before Kennedy was shot, and it seems to map out the road of American politics for the next 40 odd years. It certainly has similarities with today's climate, with its talk of civil liberties and patriotism.

It really is hard to write about it without giving away the story or the plot. It's an incredibly unsettling film, unfolding almost entirely through dialogue, and is all the more gripping for it. You follow all the moral arguments, the mental anguish and it puts you right in their heads and you can't get out. Thinking now, there is always more to what seems to be happening, far more under the radar, subconscious I suppose. Which is apt, considering the story.