The Conversation

As Gene Hackman (a very appropriate name as it happens) peers through the mist in his dream sequence he asserts, "i'm not afraid of death" and then after grasping for a few seconds concludes 'but i am afraid of murder" This hypnotic scene is perhaps the most unnerving and Lynchian part of a film that manages to detect the neurosis and frustrated responsibilities of the modern man in a distorted conversation with the viewer.

The story of Harry Cole, an uptight but professionally esteemed eavesdropper, bugger and phone hacker who taps into his conscience whilst recording an elliptical conversation held between a couple in a San Fransisco park. A devout catholic, the film follows a man though his existential dillema as it gradually dawns on him that the ethics of his trade are not as seemingly mundane as he had supposed. As he begins to suspect devious underlying motives beneath the malaise of his assignment, Cole is intent upon confronting the Director to get assurance that the couple will not be harmed. The futility of his efforts at locating the 'director' were evocative of K's struggle in The Castle to gain a meeting with the enigmatic Klamm, and the administrative hurdles thrown across his path (the obstinate receptionist, and Harrison Ford's malevolent personal assistant) just further reinforced the Kafkaesque impression.

I think it can be legitimately referred to as a postmodern film due to both its content and form. In a similar way to how Hitchcock's Rear Window makes the viewer bedfellows with a peeping tom, and consequently forces them to re-evaluate the voyeuristic side of the cinema, the conversation achieves the same self-analysis by looking behind the curtain of the couples unfolding narrative at the observer on the other side. The jerky, non-linear and fragmentary nature of the espionage makes for a prevailing spirit of suspense, manufactured, as it was in Rear Window, through the most minute of changes in the visibility or audibility of the subject. The subversion employed is that of revolving the lens onto the director of the recording, cole, who at first deflects any interest in the case onto the 'director', who is made unattainable by the machinations of his secretary- all of whom we then understand are pliable to the instructions of the true director Francis Ford Coppolla, shielded at all times from the scrutiny of the lens.

Harry Cole's dysfunctional,shrewd and mechanical dealings with people in combination with his catholic upbringing where reminiscent of Pinky in Brighton Rock, and how both manufacture an enigma around themselves in order to conceal a desperate loneliness. When Cole visits the prostitute he begins to illuminate an affection previously absent from his character yet this is reflexively withdrawn as soon as she begins to question him. This idea of the guarded and secretive inquisitor, skilled at peeling away the mysteries of others lives but cautious to the slightest intrusion into his own, is a fascinating paradox that has deservedly appeared in many thrillers. The most recent recycling of the Cole prototype would appear to be the protagonist in the real-life story of East German oppression The Lives Of Other's, who throughout yields no interference by his colleagues into his own opinions, interests or hobbies so as to avoid suspicion. Meanwhile he is documenting the every movement of the counterculturists under his surveillance, from discussion about minutia down to his bemused paraphrasing of their sex. In fact despite the different settings, the breadth of similarities is such that you have to stop to remind yourself that however fantastical such an environment may appear, the Stazi did exist and where active during the period coppola made his movie.

Overall a magnificently shot, compelling and disturbing drama- the final coda of which is still vividly present to my mind.Harry Cole slumped on the floor mournfully improvising on saxophone over the snaking piano theme, his shirt unfurled and clammy, surrounded by the detritus of the street-lit apartment he has turned upside down and stripped bare to find a trace of surveillance.