Monday, January 17, 2005
Coppola's "Lost" Art Film....
While nursing a cold and a three-day weekend, DVDs I perused included "The Conversation," Francis Ford Coppola's brilliant 1974 meditation on privacy, paranoia, and the morality of surveillance. Gene Hackman is indelible as an expert in bugging who shuts out intimacy and is increasingly haunted by the sometimes deadly fallout from his work. Episodic and moody, but very tight, this movies delivers a knock-out ending that makes its inspiration, Antonioni's "Blow Up," look like a major cop-out. Hackman (pictured left), btw, is the trimpuh of acting depth over prettiness, God bless his sould. Finally, you may ask, how "lost" can a film be that was nominated for 6 Oscars including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director. Plenty lost, actually. Has anyone under 40 ever heard of "Sounder"? "The Dresser?", "Bound For Glory"? Coppola made "The Conversation" between Godfather Parts 1 and 2, whose breatheless narrative, iconic stature and pop-culture omnipresence clearly overshadowed our "little art film." Note as well 1974 was the year of Watergate, heightening relevance for a film about wiretapping... Thank goodness for Netflix... : - )
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