The Conversation

Sometimes, when you watch a classic movie, you understand why it was and is still revered. It has a timelessness and a beauty that transcends when it was made. Vertigo, Casablanca, Star Wars Episode 4. Sometimes, you can see why it was revered then, but there’s an aspect of “you had to be there” that keeps the movie at arms length. All The President’s Men, Freaks, Baby Face. And then there are those classics where nothing about it makes sense. It doesn’t seem like a classic now, and you can’t imagine how it was even successful then. The Conversation. I don’t get the appreciation for this movie. I don’t get how it’s in the Library Of Congress. I don’t get it being nominated for an Academy Award. I. Don’t. Get it. What is it about this dull, drab, glacial, barren, inert movie that gets it so much love? Is it the tension and thrills? Well, it can’t be that, because there isn’t any. At no point in time did I feel tension building in any way. Not once did I feel a sense of stakes. I watched a movie called The Conversation and I got a lot of those, but that’s all I got. Boring, meandering conversations. That party scene lasts an interminably long time and goes nowhere. The scene with Teri Garr, pointless. So much talking that is just talking. And the rehashing of the titular event happens so many times, and the conversation seems so fragmented and nonsensical. Is it the characters? If it is, I’d like someone to explain to me any character in this movie and make it make sense. Except you can’t because nobody has any depth whatsoever, except Gene Hackman, who is a bundle of contradictions. He’s paranoid enough to lie to people about having a phone and has three locks on his door, but he’s totally willing to have a bunch of peers in his line of work (not even friends) to his work studio for a drunken party with hookers. He’s supposedly a man of faith (he gets offended at people using Christ’s name in vein), but he hasn’t been to confession in three months, pays for hookers, and his job is basically spy for hire. He supposedly has this huge moral quandary over the contents of the titular conversation and whether or not to turn it over to his client, but again, LOOK AT THE LINE OF WORK HE DOES. Hell, they mention how a previous surveillance job ended up in the murders of three people, and he doesn’t seem phased. So where is his sudden moral quandary coming from now? The movie doesn’t explain it. It just happens, because plot’s gotta plot. Is it the mystery of the conversation itself? Well, we hear it over and over again. The movie doesn’t tell us anything about Hackman’s clients. And the shocking twist ignores the fact that it leaves behind a mountain of evidence that disproves the cover story. Never mind that, for large stretches of the movie, the mystery of the conversation is ignored in favor of … nothing. Nothing that advances side plots, nothing that builds character, nothing. I was all set for a mystery thriller with The Conversation. I was ready for a neo-techno upgrade to Rear Window (for the 70’s), where the voyeurism came not from sight but sound. Instead, I got something dry and devoid of life. A movie as uninterested in building its own premise as it is engaging the audience. I would just like to know how it is that I’m seemingly one of the few who sees that.