The Godfather Part III
1990
Francis Ford Coppola
I don't know if you picked up on this during the 2019 interview about The Godfather Part II—or even remember, or even give a fuck—but I am on the outside looking in as far as The Godfather Trilogy is concerned. I don't hate them, I don't love them, I give them their due for being historically important films, and I also really don't give too much of a fuck. It's partially ignorance, partially a conscious or subconscious pushback against its reputation as a "masculine" film, and partially the Elvis theory (I've seen what it's inspired, and I like something like The Sopranos commenting on The Godfather more than The Godfather itself), but regardless of what it is, I had a really hard time motivating myself to watch this film, the final part of a three-part film series.
But I had to watch it. That's the point of this whole now-years-long project, to watch all the important films that I normally wouldn't have watched otherwise (and didn't watch, hence the motivation of the list, to make that no longer true). As expected, I enjoyed The Godfather Part III, for the most part. I thought it did what it was supposed to do well, and while there were negatives—both due to the film itself and due to my lack of appreciation for the mob genre—I don't regret spending a Sunday night entering this world one last time.
Lots of interesting baggage with this final part of the trilogy. Primarily, it is known as the "worst" of the three movies in this series, and that's interesting, because I was curious to see whether that was because of its own merits or because it just couldn't stand tall next to the first two parts, which are usually known as two of the best movies of all time. My interpretation after watching? A little of both, I guess. True, it was definitely the worst of the three, but not by much. The main problem is just how the story itself is designed—this is explicitly the "coda," and so if it's "after the ending," then it seems somewhat superfluous, and somewhat boring. The film really leans into it, with Michael Corleone's downfall being matter-of-fact ("I sold everything! That's it, gang! I'm out!"), and then his death being bland (on purpose).
Actually, let's get back to the baggage in a second, and talk about the ending. In the first cut, Michael is in some empty courtyard, surrounded by some stray dogs, and he falls over and dies. Simple enough. However, in 2020, Coppola recut the film (second time he's done that in this blog column), gave it a new title (The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone), and, most importantly, gave it a new ending. I watched the original cut, so this is just wait I've heard, but apparently Michael doesn't die in this new one. The movie just cuts out while he's sitting on that lawn chair, looking dejected. The implication being that Michael is doomed to live forever? As punishment for his crimes?
Which, by the way, apparently Al Pacino disagreed with that whole plotline to begin with, that Michael would ever be sorry for anything that he ever did. Ultimately, though, I don't think any of this matters. Whether Michael is sorry or not, whether he dies or not, none of it matters if how we got there is boring. And it kind of is, I'm sorry to say. This film was almost three hours longer, and the first two were especially boring. Lots of chatter, lots of backroom dealing, a few murders enacted upon characters I either didn't know or didn't remember.
Take that opinion with a grain of salt. I'm just addressing the allegations that this is the worst Godfather. It's true! It is! But the grain of salt is there because I was never a big fan of this stuff to begin with!
You know what I am a fan of? Contrarian opinions. Here's a good one for you: Sofia Coppola did a really good job in this film. This is contrarian—or would have been in 1990, anyway—because her performance is (or was?) widely panned. I was prepared for the worst, but the worst never came. Maybe the performance has just aged well, but I thought it was equal parts sexy and mysterious. Like, she was supposed to be a boring front for a criminal enterprise, right? Had she overacted, it would not have worked well. Underacting was the key, and she... well, I don't want to say "nailed it," but she got a lot closer than the cranky critics of the early '90s said that she did.
But wait, back up—"sexy and mysterious"? Maybe that was the wrong choice of words, seeing as she, um, was fucking her first cousin. This is one of those things in a movie that bothered me simply because no one in the movie was talking about it enough. Mary Corleone and Vincent Corleone nĂ© Mancini were first cousins. Mary is Michael's daughter, Vincent is Sonny's son, and Michael and Sonny were brothers. There is no ambivalence here. Mary starts hitting on Vincent in one of the very first scenes, and it takes 92 full minutes for anyone to even mention the fact that they are cousins. Sure, characters are against the pairing, but every time it's brought up, the reasoning is "it's too dangerous for Mary!" and never, "um, maybe first cousins shouldn't have SEX with each other?!"
Is this some icky Italian thing I'm not familiar with? Was this not frowned upon in the early '80s (when this film takes place)? And, like, this isn't even one of those Monica-sitting-on-her-brother-Ross's-lap things where it's icky because it's implied incest but in a jokey way. No, Mary and Vincent are in a sexual relationship. As cousins. Weird stuff.
Almost as weird, but not in a creepy way, was how old Al Pacino looked in this film. The difference between his appearance here and in Part II is striking. He's paunchy, hunchbacked, gray haired. I think it's just weird how much fifteen years pressed upon this actor, especially considering the fact that he doesn't really even look like that much older in the 30 years since (one-time PoYB contributor Marie may have discovered the reason Pacino was able to not age all that much since 1990—a Shrek phone case).
I suppose that was the point, right? That everyone looks really old, because this is the end. Maybe if I had liked this film trilogy more than I had, it would've created some tension, knowing that this was the goodbye, but, ya know, whatever.
I did enjoy the ending, though! FFC appropriately racked up the drama by setting the climax at an opera, where Michael's son Anthony was belting away on stage as murders happened silently in the rafters. The whole thing was really well-staged. Did I see Mary's death coming from a mile away? Sure, and not just because I'm pretty sure I read the plot summary for this movie before interviewing Brittany about Part II. It was also heavily foreshadowed throughout the film, that Mary was in danger by even being tangential to this mob lifestyle. If Michael was to truly be sorry for his sins, he'd have to pay the ultimate price, and here we are. That the opera scene still found a way to stretch this much suspense out of it even though we all knew the ending is what makes the last 40 minutes of Part III fucking incredible.
So let's see—the worst film, with the worst and oldest actors, featuring the worst plot, and the worst incest... all in all, I'd say a pretty good film.
GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5
NEXT TIME: We go from the third movie in a series to the seventeenth movie in a series, when we watch GoldenEye, the James Bond film chosen for this list (and all you Nintendo kids already know why).
No comments:
Post a Comment