This being my first time seeing The Godfather, what struck me the most was the passage of time. An entire decade passes over the course of its (woefully short) three-hour runtime. As a result, the film could be compared to a series of snapshots. It lacks a conventional, structured narrative. Instead, we the audience are merely peeking into the lives of the Corleone family during a particular period of turmoil and are led to draw our own conclusions. Now that's not to say that The Godfather is a slice of life type of film. There's a clear beginning, middle and an end, and its point as such isn't ambiguous. But what makes it a special film(aside from the obvious accomplishments of the cast and crew) is its naturalism.
I want to bring out one moment that caught my eye. It was during the middle of the film, when Al Pacino's Michael Corleone returns to his family after living in exile for two years. Up until that very moment, his exile and the threat to his father that caused it have been the main focus. Yet the first time we see Michael, he is asked: "How long have you been back?"
And Michael says: "A year. Longer than that, I think."
Any conventional film would have taken the oppurtunity to milk the emotional value of Michael's return, showcase his reunion with the inimitable Don Vito(Marlon Brando) and the massive change in the family dynamics that this causes. In the scene after that, Michael has already assumed command of the Corleone household. Modern crime sagas like Breaking Bad could have dedicated entire TV seasons to such a lost moment, yet to The Godfather, it's nothing more than a moment. Another picture in the family album. I was left wanting to see more, to know more. That can't be a bad thing.
Speaking of moments... there was one that stood out to me in The Godfather Part II. As Tom Hagen and Frank Pentangeli, both relics of the old regime and now enemies, enjoy a quiet walk in the evening, one tells the other: "We were like the Roman Empire."
This film relishes in the melancholy of remembering the good old days, both within the narrative and beyond. As often is with sequels, there's a sense of something missing. Some camaraderie, some drunken elation of success that made its predecessor timeless. Now it's time for the hangover, the soberness. Capturing that very specific emotion of nostalgia, especially by contrasting Michael's dourness with flashbacks of the wholesome Don Vito(played this time by Robert de Niro, who effectively captures Marlon Brando's personality from the first film) is its strongest aspect.
Unfortunately, it's entombed within a labyrinthine plot about the Cuban Revolution and a scheme to turn the family against one another that never becomes as interesting as it wants to be. The emotional consequences are, but the actual series of events that we're meant to follow are poorly defined and uncaptivating, involving new characters and settings that are nowhere near as interesting as the ones we've seen before. This is where the nostalgia for the previous movie becomes somewhat problematic. It's fine to be wistful for the specific atmosphere and family in the original, but on some level, this sequel should still have made us engrossed in what happens now, to build up the heartbreaking catastrophe that is Michael Corleone's reign as Don. That is where The Godfather Part II falters. It's good enough for us to care that bad things happen. It's not good enough for us to care why.
The Godfather Part III ends with an opera. It couldn't be more appropriate, because that's what these films have come to represent. An exaggerated storm of powerful emotion, unrestrained by narrative or consistency. To give this film a fair chance, I watched both its panned theatrical cut and Francis Ford Coppola's rerelease, known as The Godfather Coda: "The Death of Michael Corleone". I was surprised to find that I preferred the original version. It is more bloated and less coherent, but that only makes it fit better with the other films. More importantly, however, Coppola's desire to streamline the sequence of events resulted in the removal of several important scenes which I'd argue make the film worth watching in the first place.
Now an old man bereft of the cold paranoia of his youth, Michael Corleone is ready to make amends. Why he feels the need to do this when he's surrounded by a family that loves him unconditionally is unknown to me. Michael was practically dead inside when we last saw him, having killed and tormented them into submission. Although the guilt remains, the effect of these deeds on those surrounding Michael appears to have been forgotten. He is respected, understood and even admired. It is no longer plausible that his fate would be abandonment. So that leaves the question of why The Godfather Part III was even made, if not to follow on the second film's legacy? Opera. Smoke and mirrors. An extravagant film of flair and nostalgia. A shrewd moneymaking scheme disguised as a tribute. In its own way, the perfect tribute to Michael Corleone.
No comments:
Post a Comment