The Conversation

The Conversation is a thriller set inside the world of surveillance. It follows the story of Harry Caul, an expert in the field of surveillance. He is a man who has little interest in the people he follows and listens to, he seems only to care about getting the job done. It is only after recording the conversation of a young couple that he starts to think about the consequences of what he is doing. He becomes plagued with guilt and in trying to help the young lovers he is caught up in a murder plot.

At the start of this film we are shown a busy city square from above. The camera starts to come down in a slow, swooping zoom. We hear two people having a conversation. We can't make out who it is at first. The camera movement is slow and the conversation isn't particularly interesting but still as I watched this I was instantly sucked in. In fact most of the film follows a similar slow pace but at no point did I find any of it tedious. I was absorbed.

I think one the overwhelming strengths of this film is the character of Harry Caul. He's not a spectacular man though. Yes, his job is interesting but its not particularly exciting. So at first he doesn’t' seem to be the big character that you would expect to drive a film. It is not until he returns home that we really start to understand who Harry Caul is. We start to see it as soon as he comes to the door of his apartment. He has 3 locks on the door, all of which have to be unlocked individually. Once past them and the door is opened a shrill alarm starts to blare. He promptly turns it off. On the floor behind the door he finds a birthday present from the building manager. This prompts him to make a quite passionate call to the manager asking how he knows that it is his birthday and demanding that he have the only key to his apartment. From this we can now see the real Harry Caul. He's one of the best surveillance experts in the world but obsessed with his own privacy and anonymity. He is a supremely conflicted character and one that you can't help but be interested by.