The Conversation: Movie Analysis

The film the Conversation tells us the story about the paranoid surveillance expert Harry Caul encountering a crisis of conscience when he suspects that the targets he is spying, Ann and Mark, are going to be murdered. It not only lets us feel the confusion, Harry Caul has, but also tells us how he trapped himself into such paranoid abyss. In fact, the movie does not hide information from Harry or us. It gives us the full briefing – but in a very impalpable way. It shows us Harry is incapable of seeing the truth because he childishly believes that because he acquires all the information he understands everything. However, instead of interpreting the information he acquired, he ignores the significance behind them. He develops a strong ignorance …show more content…
The film uses the lyrics of the song “Red Robbin” to convey similar messages to us at different points of the movie to show us the childish nature of Harry Caul. It is a clear representation of Harry’s inability to live a happy life, his false sense of protection, ignorance of human nature, and his tendency to do the same thing over and over again without fully understanding the truth. The first important part in this song “… live, love, laugh and be happy …” tells Harry's inability to live a happy life. Whenever this song rises throughout the movie, the camera will focus on Harry. This usually lets us see Harry’s …show more content…
This part of the lyric of “Red Robbin” introduces two important elements closely connect to Harry’s job: the rain and raincoat. The rain represents the danger and guilt of his job, and therefore Harry is wearing a raincoat because he wants to protect himself. This is caused by Harry’s childish logic, which is suggested when the song “Red Robbin” plays, and the camera zooms in to show us that Harry Caul is wearing a raincoat on a perfectly sunny day (00:02:00-00:03:12). This raincoat symbolizes a false sense protection he has tried to build for himself for years. Take his house protected with four locks and an alarm as an example, we see that it was so easy for his landlord to go to his house to leave the birthday present for him even though he believes that his house is invincible. Soon, he finds out that his landlord not only has access to his room, but also his personal information such as his birth date. Another example is that he thinks no one could bug him because he is the best bugger on the west coast. Unfortunately, this is still a false sense of security produced by his childishness. The childishness enables him to think simple and to ignore. He thought that he is only ignoring the sense of guilt he was committing: “I don’t care what they are talking about; all I want is a nice fat recording.”