The Conversation

Movie: The Conversation (1974) - January 2

Drink:

Introduction: Having watched the late John Cazale play Fredo in The Godfather, I felt the next film should be another of Cazale's five films, all of which were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. As such, I watched The Conversation on January 2.

Movie Review: There are always people and films who "age well" and those that do not. Gene Hackman, playing the lead Harry Caul in The Conversation has aged VERY well, actually looking pretty similarly to how he looks today, 35 years later. But the film in itself has NOT aged well. I have no doubt that a film about paranoia, emotional isolation, and wire-tapping carried much more weight and impact the year after Watergate than it does in an age of digital media, the internet, and cell phones.

Harry Caul is a totally insecure security expert, totally paranoid about everything since he himself is hired to spy on people and tap their phones. His most recent project involved taping an outdoor conversation for some mysterious "director", and Caul takes great pride in all the technological advances he uses to record this conversation.

In the end, when the director's assistant attempts to get the recorded conversation, Hackman begins to suspect that something is not up. Wracked by guilt over a triple murder that occurred a decade ago because of a recording he made, in a paranoid fit, he parses the entire recorded conversation and in the end hears a message that he believes may end up resulting in ANOTHER death.

Eventually, this guilt leads him to try to prevent this murder, and a series of scenes are intercut with what may or may not be Caul's imagination running amok. Much debate has occured whether a scene actually occurs or whether it's in Caul's imagination (I think it's imagined), but in the end, Caul succumbs to his paranoia and totally destroys everything material in his personal space, an unsettling ending.

But this movie is all about 1974. In 2009, 35 years later, it's more or a relic than a classic. Perhaps the best thing about this movie is David Shire's haunting piano score, which actually mesmerized me more than Hackman's performance or the plot itself. And, of course, John Cazale is tremendous as Caul's assistant, Stan, even if Cazale, just through two roles, begins to seem like he always plays one type of character - the awkward nerd.

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