"The Conversation" is one of the saddest portraits of loneliness I can ever recall seeing, especially from director Francis Ford Coppola. The only other film from the 1970's that fits that bill to a tee is Scorsese's "Taxi Driver." The difference may be that Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver" is looking to explode with violence and lives a lonely existence in New York City as a cabbie. Harry Caul in "The Conversation" is a freelance wiretapper/surveillance expert who thinks violence is about to explode and lives a lonely existence in San Francisco riding those streetcars from one destination to the other. Travis seems more animated by comparison - Harry Caul is simply an emotionless man who slowly develops a conscience, much to his own amazement.
Gene Hackman plays Harry as an anonymous man with an anonymous job. The last thing you want to do in his line of work is to call attention to yourself (something one of his cohorts does during an elaborate job). Hackman usually plays boisterous men who do not hide their emotions - they bring them right to the surface. As Harry, he is playing a man who is far too reserved, too insular, and maybe he thinks he needs to be that way. When Harry dances with a flirtatious woman at a party, it becomes increasingly difficult for him to make small talk (though he shares with great enthusiasm how he pulled his last job at Union Square to the competition, that is Allen Garfield as another clever, braggadocios phone surveillance expert). Harry also has a mistress (a very giddy Teri Garr) who knows even less about him than we do.
The crux of "The Conversation" is the recording tapes made of a mysterious couple (Cindy Williams, Frederic Forrest) in the middle of Union Square where getting a decent recording becomes difficult with too large a crowd in the area (not to mention some local musicians). Harry listens to the tapes to get the most lucid recording he can, tapes he's supposed to give to some Director at some government agency. When he starts listening to the tapes, he becomes hooked and can't help but look for the details in a fuzzy electronic recording of one unclear exchange between the couple. When Harry discovers what is being said, he fears the woman's life might be in jeopardy. Harry's has had problems with secretive recordings in the past, one that led to the deaths of three people. His conscience and his Catholic upbringing (he finds it deplorable to take the Lord's name in vain) come into prominence - he just can't let this one job slide. The film slowly builds in disquieting suspenseful strokes particularly in Harry's refusal to give the tapes to anyone other than the Director. It is Hackman at his most nuanced, and credit the excellent screenplay by Coppola himself - certainly one of the best this gifted director has ever written.
From its intricate, multilayered and overlapping sound design and its banal settings (especially a surveillance convention), Coppola's "The Conversation" is tightly wound and increasingly unnerving. Harry is possibly Hackman's most inaccessible character because we initially don't feel much for him until he starts to unravel. When Harry discovers there may be a planted bug in his banal, sparse apartment, he tears it up violently and finds nothing. All he can do is play his sax and realize he has been beat at his own game. Harry has secrets and discovers that penetrating other people's secrets is not practical. Sad, despairing, riveting.
No comments:
Post a Comment