That’s me. [Jesus would be Michael Corleone. Also, he’s definitely not going to kill you whilst you fish.—ed.] It’s an analogy, OK? Plus, if he did happen to say, “He’s got a good heart, but he’s stupid and weak,” I couldn’t possibly argue with that characterization.
Puzo and Coppola wrote brilliant screenplays for both films, and I am reading the book now. These two films are among the greatest ever produced, and I think it’s 100 percent true to say that authentic Christianity is in the background. If it weren’t, the famous baptism scene where Michael is taking baptismal vows for Michael Rizzi while the Corleone henchmen kill the other heads of the Five Families on his orders wouldn’t work. It relies on our moral intuition that this is the absolute height of hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy is also in view at the beginning of the second film, when Senator Cleary, played by regarded character actor G. D. Spradlin, delivers a slur-infused invective against Michael Corleone after playing the kindly, elderly white Senator, honored to be invited to a young man’s First Communion party. He mispronounced both the name “Vito” and the family surname publicly, while he pronounced it perfectly during his blackmail effort in private. By the way, these films provide irrefutable evidence that Italians used to be “ethnic” and non-white, before it suited progressives to decide they were the “privileged” the whole time.
Cleary of course becomes a “friend” of the Corleone family, when he’s caught in his own hypocrisy (which possibly Tom Hagen himself caused). That turn is amusing, in an odd way.
All the Corleones are definitely monsters, but they work as protagonists precisely because they aren’t completely inhuman. That’s why the story works; I think that’s why the films are so endlessly rewatchable. It’s not didactic in the way Scarface is; that film is so heavy-handed that Tony Montana could never be remembered like Vito Corleone, or even Michael Corleone. Michael ends up lonely, vengeful, and pathetic, but the second film doesn’t end with the hit on Fredo; it ends with a flashback to happier times: Michael home from college, a decade before Tessio’s betrayal, and Sonny’s death.
De Niro as young Vito Corleone absolutely cross-pollinates the first film. By then, most people decided they liked Brando’s Vito—perhaps the greatest acting performance in American history—but young De Niro gives it a very sympathetic context. Everyone Vito killed back then absolutely deserved it. And it’s interspersed with his doting on his infant children, and his undeniable love for his wife. You can’t hate Vito, even if you try. I think the story wants you to sit with your mixed feelings, without telling you where they should end up.
I unreservedly like Sonny: hothead, bad Don, harsh to his little brother, and adulterer. Even so, I like him. Maybe I just love James Caan. But Sonny to me felt like the guy who could have lived a normal life, had he not been killed. Seeing Sonny in the flashback scene at the end of Part II always makes me happy. Part of it might be that we lost James Caan himself in the last year or so, but I don’t think so. I think we’re supposed to like Sonny and Tom and Vito, at the very least.
I also think Morgana King as matriarch Carmela Corleone absolutely kills it, as well. She breaks a leg, in the parlance. The actress who plays the young version of her is great, as well. But I will never forget the scene toward the end of the second film, where Michael asks to speak with her, and asks, “What did Papa feel, deep in his heart?” You want to be a moralist and say that you don’t give a hoot what that beast feels about anything, but again, you can’t. Once more, Vito is the model of what Michael aspires to. The encroaching guilt of his deeds closes around him. That’s why he’s worried about losing his family. Carmela says, “You can never lose your family.” To me, this was the moral center for Vito and Carmela. We don’t see Vito agonizing over his moral choices; he loves his family, and that’s enough. That’s why he’s softened after telling Johnny Fontane to “act like a man!” He asks him if he spends time with his family, and receiving the answer in the affirmative, he says, “Good. Because a man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man.”
Let’s wrap this up: even if you are a monster, you’re not completely one. You’d be facing the wrath of God in that scenario. And most of you aren’t Corleones; repent, deal with God, and move on. Guilt isn’t irrelevant, but most people make their own, either trivializing really bad stuff, or by feeling guilty for no good reason. Probably because the absolute right of Almighty God to love and forgive seems wrong to prideful souls.
Comments