The Conversation

I can't believe that I had not heard of this film until recently. In case you have not, it was one of Copola's early films. It stars Gene Hackman and John Cazale. Actually, Cazale was the reason that I had heard of the film. He made only a handful of films before dying of cancer. These films include the first two Godfathers, The Deer Hunter and Dog Day Afternoon. The film starts innocently enough - a simple scene between two secret lovers. What unfolds as the film goes on is quite extraordinary and often unexpected. I can't recommend it enough.

What a beautiful, insightful and utterly mesmerising thriller. Honestly one of the best films I have ever watched, with a screenplay to be studied and unpacked, a performance to revel in, and a stately quality unmatched by almost anything else I've seen. Just watch it and let it wash over you.

Leaves me most reminiscent of the enjoyable thriller Blow Out, but if you ask me, this is more horror than a thriller. Ultimately, The Conversation is a thoroughly unnerving and surreal character study about a paranoid man who is deeply empathetic of others, desperately wanting to be understood, but contrastingly refuses emotional vulnerability, consistently presenting himself towards others as apathetic, most certainly in part as a way of not facing the demons he has in the closet.

Great movie with a superb Hackman. Love his raincoat.

Great depiction of a neuro-divergent mind. Gene hackman was perfect.

Great film about paranoia and the surveillance state. Memorable ending.

Social anxiety takes a lot of forms, and this movie went through many of them.

What it did best was make me feel how cyclical and lonely paranoia can make you. When you don’t trust anyone around you… when you can’t make friends… when you drive yourself crazy thinking of being compassionate to people who don’t even know your name… when you get the courage to get close to someone your fears are realized… when you keep people far away you second guess whether you’re enacting a self-fulfilling prophecy of loneliness.

I love that this movie skated along the edge of showing longing-for and avoidance-of human connection for so long at such an frustrating, oscillating asymptote, that I felt like the self-destruction of the ending scene was actually appropriate behavior.

One of those films that is difficult for an unprepared viewer due to its slowness and meticulous attention to detail. Imagine that you are trying to recommend it for viewing, what will you say? And at the same time, all the chic and meaning of this immersion in paranoia appears in the ending. Piece,yes.

One of the 1970s best!

Gene Hackman plays a reclusive surveillance mastermind, so terrified by the prospect of tasting his own medicine that he's grown certifiably obsessive-compulsive. He's also a deeply religious altruist, which stands in sharp contrast to the seedy nature of his business and the people who pay him for it. This inevitable internal conflict peaks when he eavesdrops on a similarly skittish young couple and begins to worry that his recordings will lead to their death.

The suspense takes some time to develop from there, as Hackman's gentle spy leads us through the nuts and bolts of his work, navigates a trade show (where, to his dismay, he's recognized) and swings between concern for the subject and obligation to the client. I found the head-down technical bits fascinating, a close inspection of modern mechanical and electronic wizardry in a more primitive form. Today, it seems like almost anything is possible without much extra effort from the operator, and there's a lost sense of challenge and intimacy in hand-waving all the details like that. _The Conversation_ celebrates its knowledge of just how nuanced and difficult this work really was, and while that often slows the pace to a crawl, I enjoyed it all the more for taking the time.

The more dramatic twists and turns deliver, too, but those all arrive in a rush at the very end, an explosion of stress and fright that heralds a jarring tonal shift. It's effective, with a major script-flip moment that lingered with me for some time and a rewarding, if not happy, resolution, but it's also very sudden and overwhelming. The preceding hour of quiet contemplation and neatly-dodged confrontation had almost lulled me into a trance. Hackman is excellent, as is John Cazale, an under-appreciated favorite of director Francis Ford Coppola. Baby-faced Harrison Ford also pops in for a few scenes, one of his earliest film credits, and leaves a lasting impression.