the conversation (w&d coppola)

“Lordy, I hope there are tapes”, is the phrase famously uttered by James Comey when it was suggested that his conversations with Trump might have been recorded. The importance of tapes in American political life can be traced back to Watergate and the conversations recorded by Nixon himself which helped to bring about his downfall. The Conversation was made around the time that Watergate was blowing the lid off American political life, in an administration beset by rumours of corruption and foul play. It sounds familiar. The film also feels frighteningly prescient in the way in which it articulates the idea of a surveillance state. There’s no such thing as privacy anymore. Anything we do or say can and will be monitored. This Kafkaesque notion of a surveillance state leads to a breakdown in trust. Human relationships are polluted by paranoia. By the end of The Conversation, a beleaguered Gene Hackman is a prisoner in his own home, trapped by a justified fear. The only sound left to articulate are the mournful notes of jazz he plays on his tenor sax. 

One supposes that great art doesn’t have to be prophetic, but on the other hand one supposes it does have to be rooted in truths about the human condition that go beyond the context of the art work’s setting. In this sense, Coppola’s The Conversation qualifies in the “great art” category. Technically it’s just about perfect. The script is tight as a drum. The edit is flawless and the sound edit, by Walter Murch, is a thing of genius. Hackman’s acting, the lugubrious fallguy who can never be too careful (but never be careful enough) is a masterly performance, all grunts and hidden sadness behind the eyes. (Of all the great actors who emerged in the seventies, Hackman might be the most underrated). The opening shot is a truly dizzying long sentinel take, lasting up to five minutes. The audience doesn’t realise it, but the whole of the film’s contents are contained within this single take, like a seed about to germinate. It succeeds in putting the audience on the edge of their seat, and from the word go we know that we can’t afford to take our eyes off the film for a moment, every detail is important. There is a mystery to be solved, even if, like the protagonist, we don’t even know what the mystery is. If that isn’t a metaphor for the human condition, I don’t know what is.