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Publisher: Patrick Breitenbach
Biography: Ingenico ePayments. Ex-Veem, Eventbrite, PayPal, AmEx. NorCal. Dad.
91771 Vote
cast=Gene Hackman
Francis Ford Coppola
genre=Mystery
Countries=USA
tomatometer=8,3 of 10 Star
The Conversation works because Harry Caul is a tragic everyman figure. He is poignant and misguided in the all too familiar way of the mere cog in the machine, taking dubious pride in keeping one's little part of the mechanism running, steadfastly refusing to look at consequences or take responsibility for one's own behaviour. Harry is proud of and obsessed with the wrong things (with technological prowess, with being `the best. afraid of the wrong things (being proved wrong or incompetent) and he is finally undone and wretchedly alone, without any real understanding of how he has become so.
In Harry's case, when his composure starts to shift, he becomes persuaded that his technical competence has been used by the wrong people, with deadly consequences, and is about to be misused again. In the end, however, he retreats further into himself than at the beginning of film- when he was already remarkably alienated and cut off from others.
His tragedy is in not progressing or learning anything in the course of the dramatic action. He remains fixed in the stubborn choices that have left him without a human connection. He is as proud as ever, but brought down, because in his own eyes, he has failed at the very thing at which he is supposed to excel- namely, being a faceless spy without vulnerability. He has tried to make himself unknowable, and in the end, succeeds too well. He does not know himself.
Harry also has no insight into the inherent risks of the technology with which he works, doesn't see that he has made himself into a paranoid extension of his spying tools.
The whole sad, alienated beauty of the film would never work on us so well if we were not a sad and estranged people, keen on our technical toys, vaguely afraid that ruthless and unethical people are running the show as we go about our little chores. Harry brings all that unfocussed sadness about who we are to a distinct and squirming point of focus. We feel for him, feeling for ourselves. We would ALSO like to rap him on the head and say, give it up, Harry, that's beside the point.' There's more than a little insight into our own forms of pointless perseverance available from viewing Hackman's fine performance, in Coppola's great little film.
