Dammit Phil, yesterdays left over ESB is NOT breakfast. Hello world. I recommend beer and rugby. As combinations go, that ones a winner. And as i continue to pile into Breaking Bad like a fat man at an all-you-can-eat buffet (memo to self: find a local AYCE buffet), Im not really hitting the movieness. I did see a Superman cartoon that scored highly for metaness, and lost many, many marks for its stereotypical depiction of England. But still, Superman vs The Elite, comic book good times and the phrase beating the snot out of wankers, used by the Big Blue Boy Scout no less. So lets reach back into our mind, drop by a convo from yesterday and say that, yes, not enough people have seen The Conversation. The Conversation is what Francis Ford did for a bit of a breather between crafting The Godfather and The Godfather Part II. Then he went a bit barmy in the Philippines and came back with Apocalypse Now. So, the greatest crime film ever made, the greatest sequel ever made and the greatest war movie ever made, and in the midst of this run, possibly the finest sequence of output by any film-maker ever, he dropped a wee film, low of budget and high of quality, about a paranoid and lonely surveillance expert unravelling when an assignment hes hired for seems to expose a dangerous conspiracy. And heres the thing. The Conversation is quite possibly the best of the four. Its a masterclass, a tightly wound, intelligent script in the hands of actors at the top of their games, in a project not overshadowed by anything else - there are no big effects, there are no big messages, just excellence in performing and a puzzle box story that the audience watches open as the characters do. And as Harry Caul, Gene Hackman has never been better. A weird, cold, distant little man suddenly forced to address the effects of his work on the world at large and several individuals in specific, Hackman keeps it very low-key, internalised, but with a constant turmoil just beneath that surface, as he unravels. Coppola in the seventies, man. How did he end up making Jack? You cant argue the merits of the Godfather films (well, the first two) or Apocalypse Now. But truly, more people should have seen The Conversation. We should fix that.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 09:59:23 +0000
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