As usual for soundtracks, even for one of Coppola's (discreetly) greatest films (beware, spoilers ahead), The Conversation suffers from consisting mostly of minor variations on a main theme. Even when it breaks free from it, for a couple of snappy jazz numbers, it kills the mood produced by said theme which, in itself, is fantastic, and (like that final panoramic shot, going back and forth, as if mimicking a security camera, of Gene Hackman playing his sax in the middle of a presumably bugged apartment futilely ripped to shreds) perfectly embodies the film's atmosphere of ultimately resigned surrender to all-pervading suspicion, surveillance, menace and paranoia (obviously, a now unrelatable 1970's problem). Still, once is enough. A few variations do try to reach for some unusual tools, venturing timidly into musique concrète, but all of it is always cut short by a constant return to that inescapable theme, whose recurrence could even be said to bear a certain thematic pertinence. However, when its execution follows (no matter how tastefully) the principle of least artistic effort, it can still make you rapidly feel that, like good old Gene, you're just being made to run around in circles.
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