I don't want to sound like a smarty pants, but if I was in a wiretapping / espionage technology convention I wouldn't want to take a pen off anybody's hands.
I would assume that every single thing in that lobby has a bug in it somewhere.
If you handed me a glass of water, I would think that water was able to absorbed my DNA via contact with the lips and possibly record my heart beats with vibrations in the water.
Nothing is safe.
So seeing Gene Hackman's character get really annoyed halfway through the movie when he discovered somebody was spying on him with a pen; It's just kind of ridiculous to me.
Especially as he's supposed to be the best wiretapper in the entire region. I guess he may still be but he got duped.
Anyways 'The Conversation' was one of these films that I'd wanted to watch for some years now. Like many other movies I end up watching, I was captivated by the poster.
A kind of shrubby looking man recording a conversation and having the entire event presented to us as: ''What could this be about? What dastardly plot lies within this movie? Is there a great conspiracy? Is this guy spying on his wife or is he an agent for a foreign intelligence agency?''
So many questions! So come and watch the movie and find out.
And so I did. Ironically the film isn't about any of the stuff listed above. The film revolves around a guy who recorded people for a living then gives the information to high-paying operatives or agencies.
In this case it was about two people walking around Park having what seems to be a mundane conversation while several people around them record them using the highest technological surveillance of the age*.
For some reason the guy ends up getting a conscious about the whole thing and becomes hesitant to give up the information. Putting himself in danger of now being targeted by the very agency who had paid him to spy on the original couple to begin with. Eventually his information is taken by force by the agency and then they still pay him anyways as they liked his work and it's possible they may employ him again.
Also (and this might just be a presumption of my part) I like to think that the agency doesn't really care.
They can pretty much tell him and the rest of the world that they're so influential and Powerful that they can steal the information from you and then still pay you anyways as you the individual person are so insignificant that you can't really change what they plan to do.
Now within that simple story is a whole lot of awkward character development and sidetracked conversations with bunch of peoples whose stories could converge, but ultimately don't. It's an early 70s film and a large chunk of what's seen on screen could easily be removed and affect the picture in no way shape or form.
That's not to say that you don't want what's on screen.
It all adds to this ambiance that the picture really wants to show you.
Of this strange man who lives a really conceit of boring life and spies on people to such an extent that he essentially has no hobbies for fear of becoming one of his own victims. There's a slight religious angle and he does have a jazz interests but both of these things feel almost formulaic to the guy's character.
Honestly it's all the micro details and small conversations that make this film worth watching. It has a really good screenplay and the camera works really good too.
* There's something so fascinating about all the technological spy equipment. It was all grade A technology for the Age and a lot of it is still really useful now.
In a way it almost seems more impressive as today you could just activate someone's camera phone or speaker and get 90% of the information you need on them from that.
Or just find a way into their emails with a not very well protected password.
But still it's just cool to see all this wonderful tech running around and God help you if you think you understand how any of it works.
The technological aspects of the movie isn't all that prevalent but it's a cool little side thing to stare at while you see this very distraught looking Gene Hackman character sombre he's way on.
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