The Conversation

Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974) is a slow burn, threatening an internal fever pitch yet outwardly letting Coppola explore obscurity and anonymity through the eyes of a surveillance man, Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) who denies any secrets. Yet beneath this persona is the bruised ego of a man all too aware of the damage his surveillance who caused, cognizant of the fact that he’s responsible for at least two deaths. This conscious reticence and refusal of liability is counteracted by dreams wherein he suffers and tries to come to terms with his guilt, even trying to prevent death from the traumatic forward momentum he sees.

Having gained access to a couple’s private conversation by centralizing into their meandering discussions with surveillance audio tapes, Caul is masterful at fine-tuning the inarticulate sections. However, when he realizes that these individuals also work at the same business that has contracted him, Caul becomes suspicious of the intentions of his employer, especially when he recollects on the conversational aside, “He’d kill us if he had the chance.” Fearful of the repercussions and unable to suture together his personal responsibility, Harry Caul works to undermine those that threaten this couple’s lives.

In terms of a psychological study, few films are as complex as this one. Caul refuses any person entrance into his personal life, refusing to even tell his long-time girlfriend about his past, and it is telling that the solitary time we see him muster enough trust to try true dialogue with another, that same trust is subverted vis-à-vis a planted pen and, secondarily, theft of the audio tapes. Moreover, multiple viewings of this film reveal the depths to which he himself is being monitored, so that the surveillance man from Detroit now clearly seems to me central to the wire-tapping that lies somewhere in Caul’s room.

As a chronicle of the unnerving historical time period (both socially and psychologically), few films better capture the distrust and alienation of constant surveillance. Moreover, the slow burn mutates into a tense psychological thriller near the climax as blood becomes more than merely a residue, but instead stains everything that Harry Caul thinks about. Whether this film merely exists as testament to those disquieting fears of a by-gone era or exposes that same precondition in contemporary times is unknown; what is known is that The Conversation masterfully cements Coppola as a legend of the psychological drama.

The Conversation: 10/10