The Conversation

 

Director Francis Ford Coppola on the set with Gene Hackman

THE CONVERSATION            A               
USA  (113 mi)  1974  d:  Francis Ford Coppola

Nestled in-between the first two THE GODFATHER (1972, 1974) movies, both of which won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, among others, with Coppola winning Best Director for the second one, is this mysteriously quiet and introspective film that may as well come from a different universe altogether, as it’s nothing at all like an operatic gangster picture, but is instead a stylishly tense and suspenseful character study of a surveillance expert, Harry Caul (Gene Hackman), more along the lines of Jane Fonda in Alan J. Pakula’s Klute (1971), both dominated by powerful performances, arguably the best in each of their respective careers.  While Hackman is more showy and entertaining in other pictures, winning the Best Actor award for THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971) and Best Supporting Actor award for UNFORGIVEN (1992), this film is calibrated down considerably, where the viewer is intrigued by every nuance and inflection of Hackman’s understated performance, a loner, keeping to himself, barely uttering a word to anyone, feeling uncomfortable in social situations, literally locking himself into his supposedly impenetrable room most of the time, which remains locked up tight like a bank vault.  While there are elements of the script (written by Coppola himself) that leave Harry inexplicably exposed, something you’d never dream he’d allow, the gist of it is the man is coming completely unraveled by the internalized pressure of the case he is working on, suspecting something horrible is about to happen, where as a devout Catholic he feels guilty just from the toxic atmosphere surrounding his work, recalling how it led to several deaths in the past, leaving inner scars that have never healed.  The entire film takes place within the enveloping trauma slowly building inside, like a pressure cooker, where he remains closed, hermetically sealed, yet continually feeds off his own anxieties and fears, always suspecting the worst.  In this way, the viewer remains on high alert, suspicious of any and all activities, and while Antonioni’s BLOW-UP (1966) was a key influence on the film, trying to make sense of random collected material, it feels more similar to the work of Michael Haneke in CACHÉ (2005), where the two films feel interrelated, both drawing on moral themes of collective guilt and memory.      

Winner of the 1974 Palme d’Or (1st Place) at Cannes, then called the Grand Prix (from 1964 to 1974), also a special mention Ecumenical prize, the film finds Coppola at the height of his powers, dialed down considerably, where this is a more ambiguous puzzle piece, brilliantly edited with ominous ramifications.  Listed among the best 70’s paranoia films, which would have to include Roman Polanski’s CHINATOWN (1974), Sydney Pollack’s THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR (1975), Arthur Penn’s Night Moves (1975), Alan J. Pakula’s “paranoia trilogy” of Klute (1971), THE PARALLAX VIEW (1974) and ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN (1976), these are films that rose from the ashes of the 1960’s assassinations, the Vietnam War, and Watergate, where television images flooded the nation reinforcing a government that had lost control, released just days before the House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed 42 tapes from the Oval Office where President Richard Nixon had secretly been recording conversations with his immediate staff, leading to jail sentences for some and the President’s subsequent resignation a few months later.  These films exemplified a growing sense of despair from extreme governmental mistrust, which they viewed as a threat to their democracy, often feeling powerless to do anything about it.  Running throughout the film is an underlying cover-up of unseen criminal actions, suggesting events beyond our control, where the film is imbued with an alarming sense of fatalism, including a surreal dream sequence in the fog worthy of a psychoanalytic Bergman film, where Harry is heard to mutter under his breath, “I’m not afraid of death, but I am afraid of murder,” suggesting that throughout the film a murderer is in the midst.  Given an almost Kafka-like sense of absurd authoritarianism, Harry is hired by a wealthy business executive known anonymously as the Director (Robert Duvall), shielded by heavy security at the front door, a wall of telephone screenings, and underlings apparently willing to risk their lives on his behalf, making it extremely difficult to contact him, where they are like mirror images of one another, each intensely private individuals leading solitary lives hidden behind heavily protected fortifications.  Harry us supposedly the best in the business, owner of a small electronic surveillance company in San Francisco, where he designs his own exclusive products, which are for his use only and not for public usage.    

At the outset, the only sequence shot by heralded cinematographer Haskell Wexler, the camera uses an aerial shot zooming down onto Union Square in downtown San Francisco, with a crowd mulling around, including the omnipresent figure of a mime who is constantly interacting with the crowd.  Mimicking the walking mannerisms of others, he slides up next to Harry before we even realize who he is, a ubiquitous man in a trench coat blending in anonymously with the crowd, while there are other menacing signs reminiscent of some of the more disturbing 70’s conspiracy films.  This sets the mood for finding a needle in a haystack, as within this mass congestion of humanity lies an important piece of evidence that has yet to be ascertained, as Harry is on the case collecting streams of evidence using hidden recording devices, following a young couple (Cindy Williams and Frederic Forrest) as they continually encircle the square.  We hear bits and pieces of their conversation, often cut off by the loud sounds of music playing nearby and elevated street noises.  It all sounds relatively banal, where nothing stands out, but they are obviously very much in love, yet attempting to remain discreet, where it’s easy to develop a special affection for them, as they’re going to great lengths to remain secretive.  A man with a bag (Michael Higgins) is following them around, arousing suspicion when he’s been identified, so he deftly moves away, meeting Harry and his partner Stan (John Cazale) in a van parked nearby which is filled to the brim with eavesdropping equipment.  We don’t really get a sense of what we’re dealing with until Harry gets home, requiring several keys to unlock his door, yet a birthday gift has been left inside, apparently by the landlord, which peeves Harry to no end, incensed that someone had access inside, making an immediate call, where he can be heard voicing his displeasure, “I would be perfectly happy to have all my personal things burn up in a fire because I don’t have anything personal.  Nothing of value.  Nothing personal except my keys!”  Immediately we sense Harry is inordinately protective of his privacy, bordering on a manic obsession with the details of his perfectionism, as the man is an expert at remaining anonymous and not being detected or found.      

The film is a master class of interior character development, as Harry Caul undergoes a personal transformation of epic proportions.  Used to spying on others with the latest, state-of-the-art equipment, offering a detached, passionless, and non-judgmental view of the people affected by his work, in this film the tables are turned on Harry, where he is subject to extraordinary scrutiny, where the spier becomes the spied upon, yet what gets Harry is the completely invisible network surrounding him, literally closing in on him, all without his knowledge, where if truth be told, it all may be completely imagined on his part, enveloping him with a paranoiac sense of fear, but real or not, he finally starts feeling the effects of being the target of one of his own surveillance operations.  Once he realizes there may be hidden motives behind his assignment, where he is tested by one of the Director’s assistants (Harrison Ford) to hand in the work to him, though he was specifically instructed to give his work to no one other than the Director, which sends him into a panic, as if he was being used and set up, further exacerbated when he recognizes the subjects of his assignment are working in the same building.  Examining the contents of his recordings more closely afterwards, he’s able to detect words that were muffled before, where he is clearly able to distinguish the words, “He’d kill us if he got the chance.”  Bending his mind over that phrase haunts him, sending him to church where he offers a confession, “I’ve been involved in some work that I think will be used to hurt these two young people.  This happened to me before.  People were hurt because of my work.  I’m afraid it could happen again.”  This sends him spiraling through a moral crisis, as he wonders if he can in some way prevent it, knowing that he’s only the messenger, that once he delivers his work, it’s out of his hands.  In the early part of the film Harry subordinated his own personal thoughts by accentuating the professionalism and expertise of his work.  In this way he avoided any troubling existential crisis.  But circumstances change, where he becomes the subject of some unknown, secret investigation, which sends him into a fever dream of anguish, exemplified by an elaborate dream sequence where he attempts to reach out to this unsuspecting young couple and offer his help and assistance, but to no avail, as they are lost in the fog, leaving him alone in a purgatory of powerlessness and helplessness. 

As the story unravels, it’s told in a moody, atmospheric, completely absorbing style accentuating an interior mindset, beautifully expressed by jazzy piano music written by David Shire that evokes a quiet tenderness in brief interludes, literally providing the pulse of the film.  While playing on the audience’s expectations, what’s so unique about the subject is the timing, released when the government was resorting to the exact same methods shown onscreen, then lying about it afterwards, covering up their involvement, where surveillance technology, specifically wiretapping, was a weapon that could just as easily topple a President as protect him.  The Watergate scandal was a moral crisis that played out onscreen, where the film raises ethical questions about spying on others without their knowledge and consent, which only elevates to greater heights when it’s the government performing the secret operations.  The idea of spying on citizens was shown to great effect in THE LIVES OF OTHERS (2006), a film that openly describes the brazen methods used by the East German Stasi secret police on its own citizens, threatening immediate arrest, literally extorting them for favors and information on others, where no one was safe, as Stasi operatives themselves were watched.  This is the scenario that plays out in this film, as Harry has to come to terms with the consequences of what he’s done, willingly or not, revealing just how inept he is in affecting the final outcome, as he’s a lone citizen, completely powerless against a larger, better organized and well-financed operation whose motives remain unknown.  When the hunter becomes the hunted, the film reveals the dire psychological implications, where one’s vulnerability is exposed and laid bare before higher powers that remain safely protected behind invisible walls.  Yet Harry becomes obsessed with how they bugged his apartment, as he’s the master of their methods, so if anyone could figure it out, it would be him, stripping the walls and floorboards, checking the electrical wiring, literally tearing apart what was previously a completely ordered and tidy apartment, with everything perfectly in place, now stripped bare, turned into a demolition zone where pure anarchy reigns supreme.  Of note, the character of Harry Caul was inspired by surveillance technology expert Martin Kaiser (whose work station certainly resembles Harry’s), FBI Vendetta Against Martin L. Kaiser Martin L. Kaiser, Inc. - Marty Kaiser, who later wrote a book, Odyssey of an Eavesdropper: My Life in Electronic Countermeasures and My Battle Against the FBI, and also served as a technical consultant on the film.

42

42                    B-                   

USA  (128 mi)  2013  ‘Scope  d:  Brian Helgeland

He (Jackie Robinson) knew that the future of blacks in baseball depended on it. The pressure was enormous, overwhelming, and unbearable at times. I don't know how he held up. I know I never could have.  —Duke Snider, Dodger teammate in the Hall of Fame

The Jackie Robinson story is a film black director Spike Lee has been wanting to make literally for decades, but never received funding for the project, so it will likely never get made.  Instead the film gets the exaggerated Hollywood treatment, finally getting onboard with a young, white filmmaker writing and directing the story, a maker of three fairly ordinary action thrillers to his credit, including two Health Ledger ventures, A KNIGHT’S TALE (2001) and THE ORDER (2003), and nothing since, telling the story in the most narrow view possible, anointing Robinson to the sainted hero status, making him all too flawlessly perfect and larger than life, where if you listen to Harrison Ford’s Branch Rickey tell it, with Robinson following in the footsteps of Jesus and turning the other cheek, this historical event unfolds like a Biblical crusade.  Focusing on only three years, 1945 – 47, Robinson is seen making the transition as the only black player on otherwise all-white minor league teams to becoming the first black player in major league baseball, starting the season with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, making an impact hitting .297 and winning Rookie of the Year honors while leading his team to a pennant.  End of film. 

Of interest to viewers, though left out of the film, the Dodgers didn’t win the World Series until 1955, the worst year of Robinson’s career as his skills had diminished considerably at age 37, playing one more year before being diagnosed with diabetes and retiring from baseball, where the Dodgers left Brooklyn and moved to Los Angeles before the 1958 season.  Perhaps the biggest disgrace is Robinson’s inability to obtain employment with the Dodger organization after his career, where they were too busy redefining themselves in the leisurely image of Southern California.  Even after being elected into Baseball’s Hall of Fame, Robinson reached out with a letter to Walter O'Malley, the owner of the Dodgers, attempting to bridge the supposed communication gap, but nobody anywhere in baseball, including General Manager Branch Rickey (who was in Pittsburgh at the time), offered him a job, despite the mythical hero status that the game of baseball supposedly pays him today, making an exception for Robinson alone when they retired his number 42 from baseball on the 60th anniversary of his major league debut, celebrating the first Jackie Robinson day on April 15, 2007, twenty-five years after he died.  What this film doesn’t tell is the untold story of how much of a tortuous psychological beating Robinson endured and how it effected him for the rest of his life, literally killing him prematurely at the age of 53.   

Chadwick Boseman, the actor playing Robinson, is a Chicago playwright whose play Deep Azure was performed by the Congo Square Theatre Company in Chicago and was nominated for a 2006 Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Work, while he also has an extensive television acting career.  While the film balances his baseball playing days with his steamy romance with his wife, Nicole Behaire from Shame (2011), it is also divided in half, where the first half documents his progression through the minor leagues and the second half shows his first year in the big leagues.  What’s clear early on, however, is the equally heroic depiction of Dodger General Manager Branch Rickey by Harrison Ford, giving it the aw shucks treatment, where his vision-defining nobility make him a co-equal star in the film.  Needless to say, Boseman and Ford are both excellent, Boseman in exuding that electrifying joy and affection for playing the game, and Ford for having the moral mettle to see through and stand up to all the racial guff leveled at his player, basically running interference for him, offering alternative black housing in an era of “white only,” or pep talks from time to time, resuscitating his dwindling spirits.  Ford plays him like a country preacher, as if he’s been to all the rural revival meetings and can quote scripture with ease, where his cause is driven as if by divine understanding, making it all the more evident that the white writer/director cannot imagine how it must have felt being slurred and scorned as relentlessly as Robinson was.

While Rickey maintained a deep Christian faith, he was first and foremost a baseball man who wanted to win and saw that Robinson’s talent added value to the team on the field and at the gate, bringing in additional black customers, where he saw a future for blacks in baseball.  Anyone who saw players in the Negro Leagues at the time would have come to the same conclusion, as so many were major league quality players, but Rickey was able to get them at bargain basement prices.  Other forces were in play to integrate the game of baseball, including a long drawn out crusade led by the leading black newspapers at the time, The Chicago Defender, Pittsburgh Courier, and Baltimore Afro-American who were also interested in integrating other American industries after the war, including the military, but Robinson was America's first taste of affirmative action, as he was a qualified black applicant denied the opportunity to advance in his chosen profession by an institutionally racist industry.  Later on at Pittsburgh, Rickey signed a contract with Roberto Clemente, the first Latino in baseball in 1955.  In this film, Rickey is Robinson’s closest confidante, the one who accurately predicted the death threats and racial hatred that Robinson would be forced to endure, while also foreseeing how easily Robinson could jeopardize the chances of other blacks coming after him if he ever responded to the taunts, as he would be blamed as the instigator, as was the racial superiority custom of the times. 

The film fails to mention Robinson’s tryout (closed to the public, consisting of only management personnel) along with two other black players with the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park in 1945, an event prompted by the persistence of several black journalists, which was mostly a humiliating travesty designed to placate baseball traditionalists, where the players were subjected to endless racial epithets and Robinson left the tryout angry and disappointed.  It wasn’t until 14-years later that the Red Sox were the last major league team to eventually integrate in the summer of 1959.  Also left out is the largely triumphant 1946 Triple A minor league season with the Montreal Royals, where in contrast to America, Canada embraced Robinson and two other black pitchers on the team, winning over the initial racial resistance of his southern Mississippi manager Clay Hopper on day one with his spectacular play in the field and by hitting .349 and stealing 40 bases in 124 games, laying the groundwork for 2 subsequent major league baseball franchises in Canada.  Like the jingoistic sentiment expressed in the Academy Award winning Argo (2012), both Hollywood films leave out significant Canadian influence.  Also inexplicably, the film leaves out other blacks that followed on the heels of Robinson in that same year, like Larry Doby playing for the Cleveland Indians just two months afterwards, both ending up in the Hall of Fame, or pitcher Dan Bankhead, baseball's first black pitcher, and the first black player to hit a home run in his first major league at bat, who happened to be Robinson's roommate with the Dodgers in 1947, as they were the first blacks to play in a World Series, eventually losing in 7 games to the New York Yankees. 

Born into a family of sharecroppers, Robinson starred in 4 white-dominated sports in college at UCLA, baseball, basketball, football, and track, where he was the nation’s college Long Jump champion.  His older brother Mack won a silver medal at the 1936 Olympics in the 200 meter dash, only 0.4 seconds behind Jesse Owens.  Robinson was actually pursuing a football career as a running back until Pearl Harbor intervened.  So while there are gaping holes in the film, it is well acted and inspirational, providing important perspective about the historical relevance of Robinson's life and accomplishments.  But the threadbare script just doesn’t do Robinson justice, especially in establishing his legacy as a groundbreaker, as the American public grew to appreciate the unbridled enthusiasm that he brought to the game, where kids growing up on the 50’s and 60’s learned to appreciate racial diversity not through landmark legislative or Supreme Court decisions, but through everyday exposure to so many black and Latin baseball players who became not only their favorites, but among the greatest players of all time, like Roberto Clemente, Rod Carew, Juan Marichal, Frank Robinson, Bob Gibson, Willie Mays, or Hank Aaron.  Robinson’s stature transcends sports, as he almost single handedly dispelled the notion of black inferiority, where his Hall of Fame career subsequently spoke for itself, becoming a role model for courage and grace, both on the field and off as he opened doors, calling into question the senseless injustice of a segregated white and black America, becoming a good will ambassador for integration and equality, an advocate for Civil Rights, where his life serves as a personal and professional inspiration, posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.  He’s a man that helped blacks believe that things they could not imagine were now possible, where Robinson took the hateful insults, racial slurs, death threats and abuse and made it just a little bit easier for the next person of color to become the “first” or second in their school or workplace.    

Blade Runner

BLADE RUNNER              A            

USA  (117 mi)  1982  ‘Scope  d:  Ridley Scott

All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.       —Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer)

Based on the story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, it’s interesting that the title comes from a short William S. Burroughs novel, Blade Runner, a Movie, a book that bears no resemblance to the film other than its title (according to excerpts on page 95 from Ridley Scott:  Interviews), instead this darkly disturbing film features one of the most extraordinary set designs in movie history, one of the most influential and often copied since METROPOLIS (1927) (think of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s retreaded futuristic movies), but never equaled, created by cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth, music by Vangelis, special effects by a team led by Douglas Trumbull, futuristic visual effects by Syd Mead, and the superb production design by Lawrence G. Paull and Peter J. Hampton.

First, for anyone who’s ever lived in Los Angeles, there is the rain.  A city built out of a desert, this sci-fi futuristic vision of Los Angeles in 2019 is a decaying neon-lit city under a constant deluge of rain, where puddles line the darkened streets at night offering their own illumination.  There is no sunlight in this film, only a bleak and downbeat, melancholic film noir mood filled with people living inside cavernous mausoleums, images of flying cars and giant sized Times Square-style neon lit advertisements on the sides of skyscrapers that have an artificial life of their own, as they thrive by night seducing potential customers with product-oriented nocturnal dreams.  Mostly set in the Chinatown district, this bears a resemblance to the international flavor of Hong Kong with its bustling street activity, outdoor noodle stands, and its myriad of night life action where anything goes, a city run by commerce 24 hours a day.  Into this bizarre, almost Fellini-like outrageous display of wild characters on the street, Harrison Ford plays Deckard, a former policeman, an understated, ultra subdued kind of guy who couldn’t be more individualistically conservative, live free or die, a hard-assed loner who loves to drink and has a rebellious streak against authority, but a man who takes his profession very seriously.  A replicant hunter, a futuristic bounty hunter known as a blade runner, he is highly skilled in recognizing state of the art, artificial life forms known as replicants, androids who are stronger and more durable while just as intelligent as their makers, creatures who have been used to perform dangerous missions in outer space, who have violently revolted at being treated like slaves and returned to earth, where they are outlawed due to their potential danger to society.  

His mission, should he choose to accept it, is to track down and destroy four replicants who are at large, where his orders are to retire them permanently.  But before he gets started, we are introduced to the mastermind behind the intricate sophistication of the replicants, Eldon Tyrell, the tiny bespectacled Joe Turkel, who lives inside an architectural shrine where we also meet his gorgeous assistant, the alluring and seductively demure Rachael (Sean Young), who always looks like she just stepped out of a fashion magazine dressed in furs with her hair perfectly in place, wearing bright red lipstick that accentuates 1940’s noir sensuality, a replicant who still thinks she’s a human.  The rest of the film is a police action thriller as Deckard tracks down his subjects with a giant gun while also cuddling up next to Rachael after telling her the truth about herself, which is a journey questioning the meaning and value of life itself, as these perfected machines have a built-in expiration date of only four years, which applies to Rachael as well.  Knowing they are condemned to die in such short order, these otherwise perfect creatures develop a desperate streak, as they want to live.  In the process of tracking them down and wiping them out, Deckard learns to appreciate his own mortality through their mysterious eyes. 

Especially memorable are the nauseatingly dull, opening interview session with Kowalski (Brion James) just before he goes beserk, the scenes of Joanna Cassidy as Zhora the snake woman running for her life through the crowded Chinatown streets, eventually crashing through a succession of glass mirrors with multiple neon reflections, the bizarre make up on Darryl Hannah as the cart-wheeling Pris who blends perfectly into the astonishingly peculiar living toy museum, which is the home of artificial designer J.F. Sebastian (William Sanderson), whose toys resemble the marvelously strange playworld of Lawrence Olivier in SLEUTH (1972), the phantom creatures behind the doors of the space station in Tarkovsky’s SOLARIS (1972), or Michel Simon’s museum of useless yet exotic marvels in Vigo’s L’ATALANTE (1934).  Especially fascinating are the strange poetic ramblings of Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), the leader of the replicants as he was trained for combat, whose will to live is climaxing simultaneously with his descent into death, as he howls like a wolf while sparring in a deliriously mad life and death battle with Deckard on the crumbling rooftops of LA, which may as well be the final showdown of the last inhabitants on earth. 

One can only marvel at the inventiveness of each shot, so carefully and beautifully constructed, from the opening panoramic image of a futuristic Los Angeles at night, a dark and mysterious place with flames of fire that billow out into the blackness, like last gasps of breath before they are extinguished, to the architectural majesty of this artificially created world that is teeming with life and bustling with energy on the surface, while underneath there are constant signs of loneliness, emptiness, and a world in decay threatened by the apocalyptic void of impending death.  In this film, artificially implanted memories serve the same purpose as real memories, as people are influenced and haunted by them, where it remains unclear whether Deckard himself is a replicant, where the line between the living and the virtual world is impossible to see except in the flashy commercialism of the streets, where the sheer artificiality is the only living reality.  What life there is left in this world appears brutal and short lived, reduced to a Darwinian dog-eat-dog existence, where perhaps only in dreams is there any relief, where we see a recurring image of a beloved unicorn running free in a forest, perhaps a Deckard childhood yearning of freedom, and of life itself before it too becomes extinguished, one of the last vestiges of love anywhere in the world, real or imagined, where all that’s left is only a memory, soon to be forgotten.