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Rating: Solitude and Sound.
Solitude has the face and movements of a perfect Gene Hackman (Harry Caul) in representing the fragility of a man who is reclusive, introverted, and shunning to the point of misanthropy. A paid wiretapper, not even knowing by whom, to spy, stalk, listen, and record. Everything. And everyone. Solitude is something Harry has ended up imposing on himself: a delicate balance built on doubt and suspicion. On a daily life made of keys inserted into locks silently, faucets turned on to speak without being overheard, and friendships, even love, slipping through his fingers as he watches and listens, impassive. Neighbors, friends, and lovers, all can be parts of a conspiracy, members of a coven. All can be spies. Just like him.
We don’t know exactly what triggers, at some point, in Harry's mind, what makes him lose control, the detachment with which he has always performed his work (“I don’t care, it’s their business. I just want a nice, clear recording”): perhaps a shadow from the past that seems to be repeating itself, a sense of guilt for a tragic event from a few years before for which he feels responsible. Or perhaps just an awakening of his own humanity, a reaction to a process leading him to identify his life with his work, his body with the interception devices he himself has designed, built, created. We don’t know, yet, at some point, Harry hears something he never wanted to hear: a young couple is in mortal danger. They will be killed if he does not do something, they will be victims of a plot, the mind of a madman, a kind of unfathomable Big Brother bigger than any of us, of which Harry has been the instrument. And, whether he wants to or not, the accomplice.
And so the balance breaks. For Harry, a progressive descent among the worms inhabiting his mind begins, a distortion (à la “Blow Up”) of the surrounding reality, a losing battle against something he himself has helped to create and can no longer stop. And solitude becomes paranoia.
The sound is a rarely used saxophone, away from prying ears, perhaps out of passion, perhaps to spoil the fun of some bug placed who knows where. Perhaps. The sound is an alarm set to guard his own apartment but unable to stop the neighbor from downstairs. It is the ring of a phone whose number is unknown to anyone. Or at least it shouldn’t be. The sound is Harry’s obsession: it is a job for which he seems endowed with uncommon skill and creativity, but it never ends, it chases him at night, in actions, in thoughts. The sound is the words of that young couple that Harry manages to decipher among the crowd's noise, without realizing that, in doing so, that damned conversation is impressed, even more than on a magnetic tape, in his mind. The sound is above all the immense contribution of Walter Murch. His the merit of having been able to orchestrate and manipulate, better than any instrument, an endless series of effects, samplings, recorder clicks, rewinds, and restarts of tapes, making them oppressive and oppressive, more than any soundtrack could. Because what we hear from the film is what Harry hears, or believes he hears. It is the dodecaphony of interferences, that croaking symphony of disturbed receptions that has found a home among the protagonist’s thoughts, and that does not seem intent on leaving. And the sound becomes noise.
Coppola shoots “The Conversation” between the first two chapters of the Corleone saga (the year is 1974), almost giving up that "megalomania" that often accompanies his characters and his filming. The measure of his direction is all in the opening sequence, in the exhausting suspense of those five minutes of zoom: an eye that initially seems to want to cast a gaze on all humanity, but which, little by little, slowly, inexorably, tightens and focuses on a single figure, on the story of a single man, small and sad. The epic gives way to the narrative of what happens behind the scenes, the legend gives way to the mediocrity of an ordinary man.
From a purely technical point of view, and since it is a thriller, it is inevitable to reference the undisputed master of more or less political, more or less psychological thrillers: Alfred Hitchcock. But if in the even tenser and more violent masterpieces of the latter there is almost always room for humor (“Rear Window”), for the voluptuous tinge (“Psycho”), for pure entertainment (ideal for this purpose the swashbuckling face of James Stewart), in "The Conversation" there is no place for fun or sentiment. The only love granted to Harry (but it would perhaps be more correct to say “the only love Harry grants himself”) is a sad love, made of occasional or, worse still, interested encounters. It is something that never manages to pierce the armor of fears, insecurities, and distrust the protagonist carries. Even the only sequence where that tension and malaise seem to momentarily lighten up (the party in the lab), reveals to be the prelude to yet another disappointment, to yet another violation of one’s intimacy. Because “The Conversation” is a ruthless and compassionless Coppola, which in the film’s second half drags the viewer into the same spiral of paranoia the protagonist is a victim of, made of images, nightmares, visual and, above all (and inevitably) sound hallucinations. The entire film's register, for a brief, but endless, sequence (the hotel one), seems to be overturned: it is Lynch's visionary mind that, for a handful of minutes weighing like boulders, takes over the camera. It is the same nightmares on which Kubrick, some years later, will build the horror of the Overlook Hotel, visiting the disturbed and confused mind of poor Harry. And, through it all, the director keeps his distance, limiting himself to a detached gaze, one who observes without intervening, listens and records everything (just like Harry), but without becoming involved, without bearing the inscenees' sufferings.
The final plot twist (which, mind you, reveals nothing about who the real victims and who the perpetrators are) thus becomes the ultimate mockery, the cruelest of psychological harassment the poor Harry’s mind will have to sustain. There is no pity or compassion. Not even the “good will” to allow this man to exit the scene defeated, certainly, but in peace. To leave him with that miserable life he had painstakingly built. The last shot thus ends up being almost the merciless conclusion of a sort of documentary on the sad and fearful existence of a man, perhaps incapable of even garnering the audience’s compassion.
Because, in the end, all that remains is just a man and his sax. Solitude and sound.
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