He is cursed with a long life and the memory of it. His is an emotional and psychological end. Instead, Coppola gives us a title card that reads: “When the Sicilians wish you ‘Cent’anni’… it means ‘for long life’… and a Sicilian never forgets.” For Michael, death isn’t physical. In this version, Michael is still in that same chair, only this time he doesn’t die. The original movie ended with Michael in Sicily, old and alone, sitting in a chair in the sun, looking as decrepit and dejected as his surroundings. The other big change comes right at the end. Originally, this scene happens more than half an hour into the movie and moving it up front creates a narrative tension that was previously missing. Michael agrees to to give him $600 million in exchange for controlling rights of International Immobiliare, a real-estate consortium in which the Vatican has a stake. This time, it’s the weaselly Archbishop Gilday, the head of the Vatican Bank, who needs to dig himself out of a massive financial hole. Now this version also begins with someone soliciting the Don for a favour. There are only two big changes that Coppola has made to this cut which runs at 158 minutes as opposed to the original film’s 162 minutes.įirst, he does away with that elegiac pan across the abandoned family home in Lake Tahoe and opens the film instead with a callback to The Godfather. (It is.) But you’d be amazed at just how much even the slightest change in structure can affect the overall experience. Now, I’m not going to undercut the impact of this version by saying that it’s exactly the same movie. A slicked back Italian coif is surely no longer how a legitimate businessman would style himself. You even see it in the way Michael does his hair. In Kay’s (Diane Keaton) struggle to reconcile her love for Michael with the dread he inspires in her. In Connie’s (Talia Shire) growth from a mafia princess into Lady Macbeth. So much so that it feels like all of them were just there, off screen, ready and waiting to be filmed. Coppola and Puzo have inhabited their minds so completely that they’ve evolved them in a way that’s real and truthful. They are the same ones you’ve always known. (Even Sofia Coppola’s much maligned performance as the tragic young heiress, Mary Corleone, is nowhere nearly as cringeworthy as its been mythologised as being.)įrom the extended party sequence in which generations of family and friends come together in celebration of their Godfather, to that incredible confession in Sicily (“I killed my mother’s son, I killed my father’s son…”), to that blistering heart-to-heart between Kay and Michael in Sicily, there is an immediate familiarity to these characters. This movie, like Rocky IV and Cloud Atlas, and Ocean’s Twelve, was never ever as bad as its reputation. I have always loved The Godfather Part III. It may not be as effortlessly brilliant as the first two movies (very few things are), but it is nevertheless a virtuoso accomplishment in its own right. And the whole thing plays out like an opera, complete with its own overtures, acts, arias, and recitatives. The third movie, which was released 16 years after Part II, tells a very different story in a very different way. The story of a man that gained the world, but ended up losing his soul. One that began with Amerigo Bonasera’s plea to Don Vito Corleone – a plea that was rooted in his disillusionment with his adopted country – before moving on to subvert The American Dream into a dark and twisted tragedy. The Godfather and The Godfather Part II were always meant to be taken as a whole. An incredibly long one, but a concluding passage all the same. It was always meant as a coda to the original films. The Godfather Part III was never supposed to be Part III. More than that, this is a title that tells you what kind of movie to expect. (Also, no studio would ever concede to putting something that verbose on a theatrical poster.) Because God knows Francis Ford Coppola has earned that right. One that allows for some level of self-indulgence. One that describes a movie that has been, in some way, revisited, reexamined, and recut. This is a title that could only exist 30 years after the fact. It says so much, and not just because of how unwieldy and ponderous it is. Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |