The Conversation

For the first few minutes of this film we simply hover. We are drawn down slowly to a street mime, then to a respectable-looking gentleman in a trench coat holding a coffee cup who makes sure that the street mime doesn't accost him. Just as that gentleman comes into focus, however, we start hearing some odd sounds (we are still, it should be noted, a low-flying hawk). Soon we are taken to the possible source of those sounds who is, of course, perfectly soundless, and the cross-hairs of his long, slender sniper rifle. Yet this is not a rifle. Only after enduring a variety of angles do we understand that positioned on the roof of an elegant San Francisco office building is an ultramodern microphone. We are still in the process of witnessing an assassination, albeit one of character not of mortal form, and the device's symbolism as a weapon cannot be understated. What we thought was a rifle is indeed trying to open hearts and minds, to make them bleed for all to see – or at least for some to hear. The targets are a young couple, Ann (Cindy Williams) and Mark (Frederic Forrest), and the mastermind behind this eavesdropping operation is a respectable-looking gentleman in a trench coat by the name of Harry Caul (Gene Hackman).

Harry, we soon learn, is a superstar in his field. To avail myself of a contemporary analogy – we are ironically nearing the end of the Nixon era, although Coppola conceived and composed The Conversation years before – Harry is the Jackal of all wiretapping trades. His assignment, which he has accepted with the same sangfroid as so many previous jobs, is to follow Ann and Mark, record every word the lovebirds exchange, remaster the recordings to crystal clarity, then sell them to an unscrupulous corporate aide (a diabolical Harrison Ford). Harry’s collaborators Stan (John Cazale) and Paul (Michael Higgins) wonder and joke about their subjects because “that’s human nature,” but Harry insists on remaining aloof and impassive. “The only thing I want from this is a pile of tape,” he says so peremptorily that Stan quits his employ. After circumstances lead Harry, a guilt-stricken if impious Catholic, to visit his father confessor (a terse scene whose abrupt ending renders it disingenuous), we learn that his vocation has resulted in people getting hurt before. He doesn’t ask questions of those deep-pocketed and curious enough to hire him, so why should he be responsible for the consequences of his snooping? This trope, the notion of responsibility for taking orders, be they staked on self-preservation or, far more unforgivably, large financial gain, is one of cinema’s and, indeed, art’s oldest (you may have seen a movie or two about an emotionless ‘driver’ who takes anyone anywhere for exorbitant fees), and it is one that informs the shape and being of Harry Caul. He may be but a middle-aged nobody, but even middle-aged nobodies can have mistresses (Terri Garr) and hobbies, in Harry’s case, a saxophone always played in accompaniment to, well, a recording.   

With the tapes more or less remastered, Harry makes an appointment with the aide for a cash handoff, especially generous for a day's work and perhaps a week's planning. But something irks him; something isn't right or, at least, what it appears to be. Admittedly, the sleek, serpentine aide, whose name is Martin Stett, and his crooked smile do not inspire much confidence. Harry won't even try an allegedly homemade Christmas cookie until his host has swallowed one and survived. Stett repeatedly prevents Harry from meeting the corporate director bankrolling this scheme – so adamantly, in fact, that, if it weren't for his youth, one would have suspected Stett of being the man he claimed to serve. Somehow, however, we sense that the aide is not the font of evil, but gleefully in the thrall of a greater demon. Reviewing The Conversation I am convinced Harry changes his mind about almost everything on the basis of the timbre of Martin Stett's voice. To his trained, musical ear so adept at making the finest adjustments to achieve perfect audio, something is hideously wrong. In Stett he detects a profound wickedness and becomes terrified (the Catholic elements of Harry's personality, which wax and wane at some of the most inopportune moments, may have played a role). In the film's best scene Harry storms out of Stett's office only to espy someone he never expected to see by the elevators. As he turns away in surprise he glimpses, at the other end of the long hall, a fuzzy, wraith-like figure gently waving a triumphant envelope. Stett seems far away, yet as Harry escapes to the elevator the doors close upon the aide's devious grin like the shutters to some witch's cottage. Thus it is no coincidence that Amy, Harry's unbearably young and unbearably naïve part-time lover, is angelic in every respect and that he subsidizes her apartment with money from people like Stett. Just as uncoincidental is the fact that his birthday comes on the day on which he achieves his masterpiece of surveillance of those two young lovebirds, because a new life has begun. Perhaps, however, unbeknownst to Harry.

Other characters float in Harry's vicinity but their invariable aim is to shed light on our protagonist. Amy's inquiries into Harry's line of work – her discovery that it was his birthday makes her feel like they have come closer – exiles her for the rest of the film. Paul and, in particular, Stan gaze upon Harry in awe, although awe may be the last earthly thing their colleague desires. Harry may be regarded by people in his field as a hero and a genius, but his passion has not made him wealthy; to liken him to an impoverished poet only appreciated by other poets is more than a bit plausible. His foil must then be a rich fraud envious of Harry's untouchable reputation and keen on embarrassing him in front of those who respect him. We get this cardboard cutout in William P. "Bernie" Moran (Allen Garfield). Reviewers have praised Garfield's performance, but his every word and gesture are boilerplate, and we are very relieved when he finally completes his mission (humiliating Harry) and disappears. Yet his annoying presence illuminates aspects of the plot and Harry's scruples, both of which converge in a magnificent warehouse scene where Harry is pursued by Moran's slinky assistant, who turns out to be available on an hourly basis. Harry and this lady, who is neither young nor old, a perfect way to pass a night, will split some sheets, an encounter that evokes a gorgeous nightmare and an explanation for our hero's surname.

What we have intentionally omitted, of course, is the conversation itself. Without spoiling what has been revealed in countless reviews, the distinct advantage for the audience of The Conversation – and indeed, the film would otherwise be unwatchable – is the pan to Mark and Ann's faces as snippets of dialogue (perhaps the most important has to do with an old hobo) are restored by Harry's wizardry. Are we privy to emotions that Harry can only imagine, or are we seeing what Harry imagines and which did not happen at all? That matter is never resolved, even at the end when some loose ends do appear nicely bowed; as such, we must remain at the full mercy of Harry's interpretation. The innuendo when Harry spends that long and regrettable night with Moran's assistant is heightened by his very conscious choice to fall asleep to the conversation, to let it invade and alter his dreamscape. Harry, you see, is really a Romantic poet in disguise. A Romantic poet who, like a cloud, sits upon the air to dart upon his spellbound prey.

Pushkin, "Истина"

A lesser-known poem ("Truth") by the greatest of all Russian poets. You can read the original here.

Forgotten dregs of human Truth
Long have the wise and worldly sought.
So many readings came to naught
Of wisdom’s mimes, so long in tooth.
“The naked truth,” they called us near,
“In wellspring crawled, and there it sank.”
With friendly tone its dregs they drank,
And shouts most wild: “We’ll find it here!”

Yet someone, (almost old man Strength),
The benefactor of the dead,
Lone witness as we folly wed,
In water drowned and shouts at length,
Abandoned all our ghosts unseen,
First thought of guilt, first thought of wine,
And having drunk the chalice dry,
At bottom Truth then chanced to glean.

Borges, "Ragnarök"

A prose poem by this Argentine on this series of events.  You can find the original in this collection.

In dreams (writes Coleridge), images assume the shape of the impressions we think they cause. We do not feel horrified because a sphinx oppresses us; we dream of a sphinx to explain the horror that we feel. If this is so, how could a mere chronicle of its forms transmit the stupor, the exaltation, the alarm, the menace, and the joy woven together in the dreams of last night? Nevertheless, I will attempt this chronicle; perhaps the fact that a single scene completed that dream may erase or mitigate the essential difficulty.

The place was the Department of Philosophy and Literature; the time was twilight. Everything (as tends to occur in dreams) was a bit different; a subtle magnification altered things. We were choosing committees; I was speaking with Pedro Henríquez Ureña, who during wakefulness had died many years ago. Suddenly we were deafened by the sound of a band of street musicians or demonstration. Human and animals screams reached us from El Bajo. One voice shouted: Here they come! And then: The Gods! The Gods! Four to five subjects emerged from the mob and occupied the dais of the main lecture hall. We all applauded, sobbing; it was the Gods returning from centuries of exile. Enlarged by the dais, their heads thrown back and their chests thrust out, they welcomed our homage with arrogance. One of them was holding a branch, which doubtless corresponded to the simplistic botany of dreams; another, with a broad gesture, extended his hand which turned out to be a claw; one of Janus's faces looked distrustfully at Thoth's curved beak. Excited, perhaps, by our applause, one of them – I don't know which – burst into a victorious and incredibly sharp cluck, gargling and hissing. From that moment on things changed.

It all began with the suspicion (perhaps exaggerated) that the Gods did not possess the faculty of speech. Centuries of life as wild fugitives had atrophied what was human about them; the moon of Islam and the cross of Rome had been implacable with these deserters. Beetling brows, yellowed teeth, the sparse mustaches of a mulatto or Chinaman, and bestial protruding lips announced the degeneration of the Olympian line. Their clothes did not declaim decorous and decent poverty, but rather the baleful luxury of the gambling dens and brothels of El Bajo. A carnation was bleeding in a buttonhole; beneath a tight jacket one could espy the bulge of a dagger. We suddenly felt that they had played their last card, that they were cunning, ignorant and cruel like aging predators, and that if we let them win through fear or shame, they would end up destroying us.

We took out our heavy revolvers (revolvers appeared in the dream out of nowhere) and gleefully put an end to the Gods.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood

A wise old Greek once said that we gaze upon what we find most repulsive because we have an inner need to learn – a statement of particular truth if we assume the human soul to be deathless. Our souls may indeed glean some reflection of light and hope from behind the cloudy sunsets that all Romantics adore; but what really propels us forth in a life that ultimately promises infirmity and decrepitude is the chance for redemption, for the restoration of all the days and nights lost to work, to illness, to bickering or internecine. In their stead we wish ourselves the chance to fill our past with the glory of living – the greatest work of art we could ever achieve. Even when the best and most breathtaking of young life has passed us by and we begin the turn through a second existence of increasing responsibility, pensiveness, and loss, we are reminded of why we were once young: never having been young means never having been immortal. Youth serves its placeholder when it extends its gaze past its greedy hands and gains a premonition of what is to come. That is why when the young perish they remain young forever both in our memory and in their own, but they will not have lived or loved as completely as those who survive to grayness. So although dying young for a starlet may lead to greater posthumous worship it is not to be desired on any soul however deserving it may be of adulation. Which brings us to one of the most famous unfinished novels of all time.

The plot involves a certain simplicity enriched only by the sensations and motives of true art. Our title character is a young man betrothed as a child by his dying father to another orphan-in-waiting, Rosa. Drood is well-spoken and temperamental like many who have had to justify their suffering, and in that way he resembles his uncle and guardian, John Jasper. Jasper is only a few years older than Drood and the cathedral choirmaster in Cloisterham, the smallish town in which our events accumulate. His position remains one of respect and clout, and his truck with all the local authorities grants him the sheen of blamelessness. Yet even a cursory glance at this "dark man" injects distrust in his vanity as if he were an alembic of maledictions:

Mr. Jasper is a dark man of some six-and-twenty, with thick, lustrous, well-arranged black hair and whisker. He looks older than he is, as dark men often do. His voice is deep and good, his face and figure are good, his manner is a little sombre. His room is a little sombre, and may have had some influence in forming his manner. It is mostly in shadow. Even when the sun shines brilliantly, it seldom touches the grand piano in the recess, or the folio music-books on the stand, or the bookshelves on the wall, or the unfinished picture of a blooming schoolgirl hanging over the chimneypiece; her flowing brown hair tied with a blue riband, and her beauty remarkable for a quite childish, almost babyish, touch of saucy discontent, comically conscious of itself (There is not the least artistic merit in this picture, which is a mere daub; but it is clear that the painter has made it humorously – one might almost say, revengefully – like the original).

We all know the type of girl depicted in such vulgarity, but our conclusions should caption the beholder not the beheld. If a cheeky, frisky young thing is your idea of a beautiful painting – or at least something worth looking at day in and day out – then the satisfaction of some primal needs will be your recurring priority. Jasper does little to conceal his fondness for Rosa, and given her attractiveness, the general dearth of eligible women in the vicinity, as well as the mild discrepancy in age (Rosa is but eighteen as the novel opens), such lust is hardly extraordinary. Jasper, Rosa, and Drood comprise the three points of an unlikely love triangle swept aside by the other characters: Sapsea, the pompous future mayor; Crisparkle, the minor canon; the Landless twins, Helena and Neville, born in Sri Lanka but of mystical origin much like certain characters in this novel; Grewgious, "the Angular man" and Rosa's benefactor who claims if forced to write a play or be decapitated, he would surely lose his head; Bazzard, his shadowy valet and closet playwright; Miss Twinkleton, the headmistress of Rosa's boarding school; and Durdles, stonemason and local drunk who also hears and knows more than most everyone else in Cloisterham. Even with this extensive cast and conversation, we never lose the thread of an argument, such as the one that Neville and Edwin have shortly before the latter's disappearance on Christmas Eve – and I will end our summary right about there.

Critics have spared no effort in decoding the novel, apparently only half-written, and arrived at the conclusion that the psyche of the criminal trumps the detective story that encases it; were it so, however, one would have serious doubts as to the validity of the whole enterprise. There is surely one overwhelming suspect and motive for the crime, but the motive vanishes once a shocking announcement (to the characters but not to the reader) dissolves a bond that many had held for eternal. The most glaring mistake of critics, and one rather endemic to academe, is to prod a hot poker among the ashes of notes that Dickens left for the continuation of the novel as well as letters dispatched to relatives and friends and try to reassemble his original intentions. There is a reason why Durdles, who is consistently inebriated yet just as consistently alert, hears a scream in or near the cemetery he patrols almost a year before Drood vanishes, and why certain characters tend to slip offstage when others appear. In fact, it is Durdles who seems to know or suspect much more than he could effectively impart:

Durdles is asleep at once, and in his sleep he dreams a dream. It is not much of a dream, considering the vast extent of the domains of dreamland, and their wonderful productions; it is only remarkable for being unusually restless, and unusually real. He dreams of lying there, asleep, and yet counting his companion's footsteps as he walks to and fro. He dreams that the footsteps die away into distance of time and of space, and that something touches him, and that something falls from his hand. Then something clinks and gropes about, and he dreams that he is alone for so long a time, that the lanes of light take new directions as the moon advances in its course. From succeeding unconsciousness he passes into a dream of slow uneasiness from cold; and painfully awakes to a perception of the lanes of light – really changed, much as he had dreamed – and Jasper walking among them, beating his hands and feet.

You might do well to consider this dream, and you might do better to omit for a moment the two characters it mentions. It is this passage that illuminates all of The Mystery of Edwin Drood in such a manner as to leave the careful reader only one decision as to the identity of the person behind our protagonist's disappearance. There is also that odd sailor, or maybe two, that drifts into Cloisterham for no apparent reason other than to visit old Crisparkle. And sailors, as we know, often detect danger from very far off.  

A Distancing from Prose

An essay (“Entfernung von der Prosa”) on this novel by this German author.  You can find the original in this collection.

Many might think that, owing to his strict upbringing, it would be painful for an author to let go of his figures and personages, to let them "take shape"; yet this is pain I do not feel. On the contrary, as soon as the manuscript printed black on white is left to the imagination of others, I am amazed to see that the stage dimensions render the novel more alien than is normal to an author. Had someone asked me how I would imagine a character from the novel – tall or short, blond or dark – I would not have been able to say; of his nose, his mouth, his clothes I wouldn't have even had the slightest inkling. During stage testing for The Clown, the protagonist Reinbacher appeared once in the guise of Saint-Just from Danton's Death. He was trying out for both plays at the same time, and strangely enough I found the Saint-Just outfit (green jabot, black boots) perfectly suitable for the role; I would have had no objections to letting him play Hans Schnier in such an outfit. As far as I'm concerned he could also appear as a sort of "Hans in clover," although his story hardly ends "in clover." It might even be possible to have all the characters come out all at the same time in costumes from different plays. The Father in a Lessing role, Marie like the Marie from Woyzeck, the Mother as the queen, a lady of the court, a brothel madam, or Mary Magdalene. As far as I'm concerned they could also all come out in street clothes, maybe getting out of a bus, streetcar or automobile. I do not feel like I am their lord and master who has predetermined what they would wear; I can't even be sure of their dialogues. An actor should not have to say those things that "do not roll off the tongue." 

Whatever their director tells them to say is an entirely different matter. I would only interfere when asked or when a fragment of a sentence or monologue simply hurt my sensibilities or, in my judgment, those of the actor because it – as we usually found out in tandem – was no longer correct. When the novel came out seven years ago, its coherence was very different from what it is today. The problems, the subject matter, the constellation of characters, the self-fulfilling process of casting out a human being – all of this has not lost a drachma of relevance; only a handful of political and societal details now differs from how things were in 1962 when the book was composed. The novel took shape as we in the Federal Republic of Germany were still officially and publicly prepared not only to confuse denomination with religion – no, a terror of denomination was carried out that yielded high political costs. Here is neither the right time nor place to question expressly and emphatically the C in CDU/ CSU: the party itself is doing so as we speak – well, at least the first party is. And the time may come when this awkward letter is discarded like that part of a pair of antlers which has been of great service in many a campaign to curry favor with voters.

What is important for me is that many political and societal sidelights still possess some kind of "historical" value in the sense that someone could say: "So that's how it was in 1962" – one hundred and fifty years ago. This historical ballast does not encompass everything and it would not be hard to do without it completely; if it were a picture, one might say it needed to be dusted off a bit. Because of this the problems and subject matter have gained in relevance: the casting out of a human being who, unknown to all parties involved, bears Religion as a form of leprosy in itself. Instead of a guitar he could have had a rattle in his hand and it may have been nothing more than a carnival rattle, which was originally a instrument used to warn and protect, an early version of a bomb siren: careful! Here is a person who has no bacteriological hand grenades with him, but instead a bug that unleashes rules and concepts of social order, mentally and physically.  

One could talk at length about "misunderstandings" and the misunderstandings to which the novel was subjected. I admit that I prefer "misunderstandings" when someone claims to understand something that I myself do not completely "understand." A writer who does not permit any kind of understanding of what he has just spent one hundred pages talking about I consider lost and rather hopeless. It may be that the form "work of art" is dying out; this novel, in my view, did not belong to that traditional category in which a secret formula existed, perhaps something akin to –+––+, which would make it impossible for the author to clarify in black and white what he had just constructed. Nothing is more embarrassing than to be asked how I meant this or that, or how this or that could be taken. I simply do not know; and if I ever knew I have long since forgotten the detail because many of the contexts and intricacies of the novel have escaped me: conversations, expressions, considerations, thoughts, witticisms, perhaps a newspaper article or a word that I heard on the radio or saw on television; an apple hanging from a tree, a bird that I saw sitting on a branch, a song, a couple of sounds, and more conversations. Of course a "work of art" arises within and from such coherence, but also from sudden "ideas," the majority of which are rejected. Yet no one, not even the author, can reconstruct these contexts. They could be fragments from a film (perhaps even quite kitschy at that), or borrowings – I could not say for sure. I would require a very calibrated computer with an enormous array of detection tools if I wished to commit myself to statements on these contexts. 

One context that I do remember and will give away, however, is the occasion of its composition. With some friends I once published a journal called Labyrinth; before having to give up the journal we were embroiled in incessant debates about the "deceptive" aspect of all art concealed in every artist. Naturally, all these discussions led to the myth of the labyrinth itself which we reinterpreted in conversation to make Theseus into Christ and Ariadne into Mary, and the labyrinth the world in which the Minotaur prowled. For sure, these discussions were the occasion for the writing of the novel; they comprised a single detail of the contexts, but certainly the most important; and perhaps the novel was an attempt to continue the journal in another way. With the revelation of such a context a possible interpretation arises that is almost too clear. What is certain is that many people got upset for nothing over the novel because they were not meant at all, they were merely the material for a modern-day labyrinth, foundation stones that although used were ultimately discarded. But here I wish to console the official and organizational representatives of visible German Catholicism: your trouble is not in vain. It is very useful, even for a writer.

I am happy to have had the opportunity to thank my friends with whom I created the Labyrinth: the late Werner von Trott zu Solz, Walter Warnach and HAP Grieshaber. Maybe even they did not notice that something of their work was continued here which in another form had failed.

Seven years later the material and themes are still dear to me, only the nursery in which the seeds were sown has become alien. With the result that I can almost talk about it as if I were an outsider.