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<\/a><\/p>\nToday begins a new series called \u201cMy Essential Movies,\u201d monthly essays on the finest films ever made. <\/em><\/p>\n\u201cThat\u2019s my family, Kay. It\u2019s not me.\u201d Michael Corleone is not lying when he says these words in The Godfather<\/em>. He means them. He means them so much he joined the military merely to prove them. We learn about that in the penultimate scene of The Godfather Part II<\/em>, a flashback that surely ranks as one of the greatest filmmaking decisions of all time. Michael, sitting with his brothers awaiting their father and Corleone patriarch, casually announces his has joined the Marines. This angers and confuses them, since young Michael was given a draft deferment (this is WWII) and\u2014as Tom says\u2014\u201cPa had to pull a lot of strings.\u201d His family interprets this as gross ingratitude, but we know better. Michael went to war to avoid becoming a gangster.<\/p>\nBut the war ended, Michael (Al Pacino) returned home, and the rest is history told in the first movie. The dinner flashback at the end of Part II<\/em> is crucial to the mythology of the Corleone family because it inserts the final missing piece of our understanding of the youngest Corleone son. Why, for example, does Vito tell Michael in the outdoor garden, \u201cI never wanted this for you\u201d? Why does Michael, years later, ask his mother if it is possible to lose a family? The answer is that Michael no longer knows himself. He is at once two people: A young man heading off to serve his country, and a brilliantly meticulous murderer who would like to run it. Michael wants to be the first man and not the second, but he fears he doesn\u2019t know how.<\/p>\nIt is important to see that famous final scene of The Godfather<\/em>\u2014in which the door to Michael\u2019s world is literally shut on Kay (Diane Keaton)\u2014as a beginning and not an end. It\u2019s at that moment that Kay, who represents director Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s audience, realizes that she will never really know her husband. In the terrifying and flawlessly acted scene in Part II<\/em> in which Kay tells Michael that she aborted his unborn son, we understand she no longer wants to. \u201cIt was a son, and I had it killed because this must all end,\u201d she thunders, right before Michael hits her (bringing to our remembrance the murder of Carlo, who married and then abused Connie Corleone so a rival family could assassinate Sonny). The \u201cthis\u201d in that sentence is the first and only time Kay makes explicit reference to the Corleone family\u2019s organized crime. The illusion of \u201cIt\u2019s not me\u201d has died. Michael has become a monster.<\/p>\nMost monsters become what they do to protect something truly valuable. In Michael\u2019s case, it was his wife and children. His downward spiral is precipitated by a botched assassination attempt in his home. It has to be an inside job. \u201cKeep them alive,\u201d Michael instructs his men as they hunt the gunmen. Later on, impatient with a relative who doesn\u2019t seem to understand What\u2019s At Stake Here, he indignantly screams, \u201cIn my home! Where my wife sleeps and my children play!\u201d Whatever happened to \u201cit\u2019s not personal, just business\u201d?<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s the point, isn\u2019t it? It was always personal. Murder is never strictly business. The parallel story line in Part II shows us the ascendancy of Vito Corleone and his empire. We watch as his mother is shot right in front of him by a local mobster. He escapes Italy and emigrates to New York, where he works hard and loves his family. When another mobster tries to extort him, he kills him, and thus begins a life of violence that is business and very personal, a point driven home when he returns to Italy as a prosperous adult to stab the old man who killed his mother.<\/p>\n
The difference between father and son seems to be that Vito knew this kind of power is ultimately meaningless, and Michael doesn\u2019t. When Michael senses his empire slipping away, he doubles down. He violates the dictum that he gave to young Fredo in Part I (\u201cNever take sides with anyone against the family\u2014ever\u201d) and aligns himself with Hyman Roth (Lee Strasberg), believing that the Jewish bankroller can finance him into a position of unassailable power. \u201cWe\u2019re bigger than US Steel,\u201d Roth intones, one of The Godfather Part II\u2019s<\/em> most recognizable lines. By the third act, Michael is no longer thinking about his family, but about his empire and revenge. Right after the assassination attempt, Michael departs for Miami to meet Roth. An odd choice; did he not question the wisdom of leaving his family at such a time? There\u2019s a haunting scene after Michael returns home that shows him arriving at an eerily silent house and creeping his way to the bedroom where Kay is knitting. Rather than embrace his wife, he retreats into the shadows, perhaps ashamed, perhaps unsure. Nina Rota\u2019s score plays sad, somber notes, music for a love gone cold.<\/p>\nAll of this makes the film\u2019s most important moment\u2014Michael\u2019s execution of his brother Fredo\u2014comprehensible. The word \u201cfamily\u201d no longer means what it used to for Michael. There are only friends and enemies. Fredo\u2019s assistance to the assassins (never fully explained in the film) makes him an enemy. The key scene is Michael\u2019s confrontation of Fredo, which becomes a familial airing of grievances for two fatherless boys (\u201cI\u2019m your older brother, Mike, and I was stepped over!\u201d). Cinematographer Gordon Willis made a masterful decision to put the two characters on either side of the shot and in shadow, emphasizing the beautiful but lonely snowfall of the exterior. The brothers are strangers to one another now, joined only by the kingdom which winter is now burying.<\/p>\n
John Cazale plays Fredo perfectly. He\u2019s weak and sexually unconfident, and resents the opinion, shared by Michael, that he is too dumb and soft to be of much use to the family. Cazale died of cancer at only 42 years old, and those who knew him said he also was fragile and sensitive. Notice the way he trembles when explaining how he feels disrespected, and then recall how he fumbled his gun in while gangsters shot his father in Part I. He feels things deeply, and in the Corelone world, that\u2019s a liability.<\/p>\n
The Godfather Part II<\/em> is, in any functional sense of the word, perfect. There are no needless scenes or busy characters. The screenplay by Coppola and Mario Puzo is so confident in its narrative that we get scenes of contemplation and atmosphere, and nothing for the sake of merely keeping our attention. Nina Rota\u2019s music is iconic and the film\u2019s famous \u201cImmigrant\u201d theme is bold and anthemic without ever becoming distracting. Every element of the movie ties into the stories. That\u2019s the definition of great art.<\/p>\nBoth De Niro and Pacino were nominated for Oscars. De Niro won, not undeservingly, but The Godfather Part II <\/em>really belongs to Pacino. He is asked to transform before our very eyes in a way that De Niro wasn\u2019t asked to do (since the latter\u2019s character is split into two actors playing a boy and a man). Coppola said years later that the decision to cast Pacino in Part I was largely due to the way Pacino \u201ccommunicated\u201d with his eyes. Watch the penultimate scene between Kay and Michael and you\u2019ll see what he means.<\/p>\nThe film\u2019s last shot gives me chills. It\u2019s one of the boldest and most unnerving close ups I can remember. An aging Michael is seen on a park bench, staring out into space. We watch his tired eyes and ask if the entire film was simply a replay of his memories as he sits here. He is alone and knows why he is alone. As Rota\u2019s famous theme plays, I find myself torn: Do I want to know what he\u2019s thinking?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today begins a new series called \u201cMy Essential Movies,\u201d monthly essays on the finest films ever made. \u201cThat\u2019s my family, Kay. It\u2019s not me.\u201d Michael Corleone is not lying when he says these words in The Godfather. He means them. He means them so much he joined the military merely to prove them. We learn […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2058,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[307,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-essential-movies","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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