The Conversation - Ending - Panning Shots

In this final sequence of the conversation (a scene of over powering paranoia), Harry realizes what the true motives of the couple were and that he knows the truth. He heads home to relax one night and starts to play his saxophone.
There is a pan going back and forth across Harry’s apartment; this being the set up for one last twist. As he plays his sax he is trying to get away from reality. The phone rings and Harry is soon being pulled back into the real world again, but there is no one on the other end of the phone.
Harry sits back down and re-enters his unreal world. The camera again pans back to the other side of the room where Harry is sitting. But the phone ring again. Harry once again gets up to answer the phone, this time Martin (Harrison Ford) is on the line. Martin tells Harry that everyone knows that he knows the truth about who killed who and why and that because of this they will be listening to him. Martin goes on to play a recording of Harry playing the saxophone from moments earlier.
At that point the camera slowly pans the room and shows Harry burst into a fit of paranoia. The camera continues to pan and follow Harry as he tears his apartment to bits looking for the bug that Martin is using to spy on him with. By this we now realise that although Harry spies for a living he dislikes it when he, himself is the one being spied on.
Harry tears up the floor and walls looking for the bug. He smashes everything. As Harry stops for a brief moment the camera pans from him to his statue of Jesus, Harry then walks over to the statue and begins to smash it also. The fact that he smashed this is very significant and proof of his paranoia, as throughout the movie we are constantly told that Harry doesn’t like people using the Lords’ name in vain. And that he is very religious.
The level of his paranoia is apparent when he forgets he knows this bugging system and learnt it earlier in the film. Harry has become quite unstable to the point that he has torn up this apartment till it is no longer recognisable, cutting himself off from the real world.
Finally there is again a slow pan going across, back and forth across Harry’s apartment showing the destruction of his paranoia and what is left of his apartment as Harry goes back to playing his saxophone.