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Rated: R
Starring: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, et al.
Director: Francis Ford Coppola Review
Generally acknowledged as a bona fide classic, this Francis Ford Coppola
film is one of those rare experiences that feels perfectly right from
beginning to end--almost as if everyone involved had been born to
participate in it. Based on Mario Puzo's bestselling novel about a Mafia
dynasty, Coppola's Godfather extracted and enhanced the most universal
themes of immigrant experience in America: the plotting-out of hopes and
dreams for one's successors, the raising of children to carry on the good
work, etc. In the midst of generational strife during the Vietnam years,
the film somehow struck a chord with a nation fascinated by the
metamorphosis of a rebellious son (Al Pacino) into the keeper of his
father's dream. Marlon Brando played against Puzo's own conception of
patriarch Vito Corleone, and time has certainly proven the actor correct.
The rest of the cast, particularly James Caan, John Cazale, and Robert
Duvall as the rest of Vito's male brood--all coping with how to take the
mantle of responsibility from their father--is seamless and wonderful.
--Tom Keogh
----------- Francis Ford Coppola's
adaptation of Mario Puzo's best-selling novel, The Godfather, may be - and
rightly so - one of the most highly acclaimed American films this side of
"A Certain Movie" by Citizen Orson Welles.
It's easy to get lost in this film when admiring Gordon
Willis' cinematography, which gives the gorgeous earth tone-based palette
- one that emphasizes the sensuous and passionate nature of the world we
visit - a remarkable radiance, or when soaking up the haunting and
atmospheric score. Coppola has made a film that presents two distinct
messages: it is both a sumptuous cinematic treat and a depressing, tragic
tale of self-annihilation.
Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), as a second generation
Italian immigrant, is presented with a terrible dilemma: to whom does he
owe his greatest loyalty, the family that reared him or the land that he
loves? At first, Michael appears to have rejected his heritage, as he
comes to a wedding wearing an American armed forces uniform, and sits with
his American girlfriend Kay, telling her a story about his father's
ruthless business practices, while denying that this is indicative of his
beliefs ("That's my father, Kay, not me"). However, by film's end, it is
clear that Michael has become his father. At one point, while his father
Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) lies wounded in his hospital bed,
Michael tells him "I'm with you now" and the ambiguity of that remark
hints at later developments, which find Michael ensconced in his father's
office, surrounded by his father's Mafioso advisors as the door
metaphorically shuts between he and Kay. In this violent and aggressively
masculine world, she can play no part.
Michael brings to the family "business" ideas and values
gleaned from his life and education in modern America, which ironically
sow the seeds of both his success and his despair. The film contains slyly
sinister commentary on the ruthless nature of American entrepreneurial
spirit, as the men who yield and pursue power follow an ethical system
foreign to most people. The Godfather is not simply an indictment of the
mafia underworld, but also the more "respectable" world of contemporary
business. As Michael ruthlessly applies the impersonal, atavistic and
acquisitive values of modern business to his family's travail, we can see
contemporary parallels in the actions of avaricious multinational
corporations. When Michael ends up remarkably powerful, yet increasingly
alienated from those (his wife and children) he at one time cared most
about, the film's moral centre is clear: Michael becomes a living
embodiment of the old Biblical saw, "he gained the world, but lost his
soul."
Given its roots in the gangster genre, where the audience
might expect a lot of violence and raw emotion, The Godfather is
surprisingly subdued and dialogue-laden. While the movie is renowned for
some jaw-droppingly effective set pieces - such as a horse's head in a
blood soaked bed, the Bonnie and Clyde homage at the heart of Sonny's
execution, or Sonny's assassination of McCluskey and Sollazo - most of the
"action" is emotional and philosophical, not physical. As a result, it is
the performances, and not the action that leave the most lasting impact.
Central to the film's potency is, of course, Pacino's
remarkably (given his later more histrionic work) subdued and subtle
performance, but the film is also graced with terrific performances by
James Caan as the mercurial Sonny, Brando as the bulldog-like Vito, the
great Robert Duvall as consigliore Tom Hagen and the beautiful Diane
Keaton, whose Kay is both vulnerable and strong. This is
one of those films that you can watch over and over again and seem
something new with each viewing. A masterpiece and Francis
Ford Coppola's finest hour.
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