The Conversation

Today's Film Journal will be about blank blank blank's The Conversation.

I really enjoyed watching this movie, and I think I can safetly say that of all the films we watched so far, this one was my favorite. I just thought that The Conversation was overall really well done. I made note of lots of small bits that stuck out. For example, in the beginning of the film rather than suddenly start out with a shot of the man in the brown suit, the camera slowly zoomed in on the mime and followed him around till he indirectly introduced the man in the brown suit. And then I thought it was really interesting how without warning the woman and the man's voices suddenly started to break up and get digitalized. It was eerie and because I didn't know what was happening it grabbed my attention right away. I also noticed that there wasn't exactly a lot of dialouge throughout the movie. Like there'd be short sections w/ a lot of dialouge and then a lot of other scenes inbetween w/ little dialouge and more music. One scene that I thought was really interesting was the one where Harry is in the room next to 773. After going out onto the balcony and hearing the girl scream and seeing the blood across the window, I didn't understand if that was 'reality' or if he was just imagining it. I thought it was just bad editing, haha. It wasn't until the end that I discovered that that scene was meant to be unclear, and that the audience isn't supposed to know if it was Harry's imaging or not till the story finishes unfolding. I thought that it was extremely interesting that a director/ editor would be able to convey that type of unclear feeling.

Character-wise, I though Harry Caul was pretty intersting too. It was pretty neat how the director showed us his (almost) obsession with security and privacy. (Ie, the 3 locks on the door, the alarm system, the call to the caretaker about how he got in, etc) It drove the point in pretty quickly that he was really strict about people not getting in his personal space. Continuing with this idea of personal space, trust played an important role in Harry's life too, in that it seemed he didn't want to trust/ open up to anyone. I thought it was kinda sad too, because in the film, the only times he started to open up to people, something resulted because of it. The conversation he had w/ the lady in green about Amy got recorded my Bernie, and as a result everyone laughed at him because 'the bugger got bugged.' That same night, after sleeping w/ the same lady, he awoke to discover that she had taken his audio tapes. Its things like that that probably made Harry so secretive and isolated. Another thing I noted was, because Harry does what he does, he knows how easy it is for someone to spy/record/listen in, on anything he does. And because of this knowlege, he chooses to be isolated from everyone so that no one has the opportunity to spy on him. This idea also plays out in the very last part of the film when Harry is desperately trying to find the 'bug' that Martin & Co. planted in his apartment. He really crossed the line of job and obsession after deciding to break open the religious figurine, and therefore desecrating something he cared deeply for (religion). After this, it was like there was nothing holding him back now, and he continued to tear apart his apartment looking for something that probably wasn't there in the first place.