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OK. I've been rewatching it, but due to it getting late, we gave up halfway through to continue tomorrow, so these are the comments I can pass after the second serious watch of halfway through.
I'm not going to bother reviewing it again, bar the fact I didn't notice that the score is David Shire who, of course, did Pelham 1-2-3. Very different.
And it was Shire's score that pointed out the big motif in the film: circles. The couple at the beginning are walking around in circles ("Don't you feel strange, walking around in circles like this?"), and Shire's pentatonic musings on the piano send us spinning into further circles. Caul, is of course, caught up in this circle of trying not to understand human emotion in order not to get involved with his work, but when he does, he can't help but be involved - and he feels like he's let himself down. The spinning reels of the tapes, so carefully observed, are further spinning wheels in Harry's circular downfall. And there's that scene in the warehouse, where Harry's standing with the girl, and Stan on the scooter is running rings around him. It's shot quite distant, and you just see Harry as a helpless epicentre, the world turning around him. Shire's score branches out in its jazzy minor sevenths, but it's that pentatonic motif, twinkling around that has the strongest hold over me. I'd entirely forgotten the score, and the moment that motif arrived, as Harry walks across the railway to his building... that's when I remembered why I love the film so much.
Also note the other trappings of observation - the telescope in Ford's office, for instance, and the slow realisation even early on that anything could be a bugging device.
There's also something in Bill Butler's cinematography; note the early shots of Harry in his apartment. The camera's fixed, and he'll walk in, only to hide in the kitchen. You think there'll be a cut, but there isn't; he walks out, and goes over to pick up the phone, again hiding himself. When he's on the phone, he gets up and walks around, defying the camera, trying to hide from it, and the camera lets him: it stays fixed on that sofa, voyeursitic in its fixed nature, and doesn't follow him; he sits back down in front of it again in the end. Similarly, in the party-in-the-warehouse, as he's fixing himself that drink, he's right-of-frame behind the blue transparent screen, almost out of focus, looking like he's in cine film, detached, but still obvious to the rest of the world. He hasn't mastered hiding places.
That's what I've got so far; when the circles thing hit me, I wanted to jump up and down. More tomorrow night when I've finished it off. I need the soundtrack recording... |
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