The Godfather, Part III

The Godfather Part III is a film steeped in history, memory, and, most of all,  regret. Regret for a life lived in crime and regret for a family lost due to this life. The movie  is a deathbed memory of the Godfather himself as he thinks over his eventful life. It begins at a party, of course, as all Godfather films must. Michael receives a medal from the Catholic Church, and so begins one of his most complicated relationships, one which takes him to Sicily and into the Vatican, where he befriends the Pope himself. 

There’s a Churched-owned corporation involved called Immobiliare in which Michael tries to get a controlling interest even as he’s pressured by his Mafia friends to launder money for them through it. It’s all very complicated, but utterly engrossing as it unfolds onscreen. What the plot of the film accomplishes is to play into Francis Coppola's big thematic irony around which he structures the film: there is no escape for Michael. Not even if he goes legitimate can he get away from the life he chose for himself. He has a quote for it: “The higher I go, the crookeder it becomes.” “Legitimate” is a made-up concept in the world of The Godfather. Instead of thugs with guns, Michael is surrounded by lawyers with pens to do his dirty work.

A lot of people do not consider this to be at the level of the first two, and maybe it is the most imperfect of the three, but it's also the one with most heart, the one where Michael looks most like an actual, vulnerable human being instead of an untouchable Mafia overlord, as he finally realizes his life has been a train wreck of deceit and moral compromise. The roots of Shouty Pacino begin to take hold here ("just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!"), but there is still a lot of nuance in his performance. Just look at the rising level of admiration Michael feels towards Vincent (Andy Garcia) in their first scene together. He goes from dismissing the guy to respecting him and even inviting him into the family picture at the end. Michael says nothing that would lead one to believe he cares for Vincent, but Pacino shows everything with just his eyes. And throughout I really did believe that hotheaded Vincent, as played by a wonderfully deranged Andy Garcia (he bites a guy's ear off!), was the carbon copy of James Caan's Sonny. 

Part III is designed to heavily call to mind the first two parts, with multiple flashbacks and repeated situations taking center stage. “Never let anyone know what you’re thinking,” Michael tells Vincent as they consider what to do after a hit on him. It’s almost exactly the same thing Vito Corleone tells Sonny in Part I. All this has happened before, and it will happen again. The tragedy is that it unfolds before our eyes without our ability to change it. One could even say that the ghost of Fredo is the star of the film, which starts with a flashback to the moment of his death as he peacefully prays a Hail Mary on a quiet lake. The rest of the film is not so peaceful. In fact, it might be the most violent of the trilogy, with the most gruesome amounts of death, as if to drive home the point of this pointless way of life to both Michael and the audience. 

It's clearly inevitable from the first death-filled frames of the film— which show the decaying ruins of Michael's Nevada mansion from Part II — that someone else close to Michael will perish (ex-wife Kay, nephew Vincent, son Tony?). Alas, it ends up being his precious daughter Mary. People are not too kind to Sofia Coppola's depiction of Mary (and for good reasons, since she’s a terrible actress who should stick to her work behind the scenes), but there's an innocence written into the character that is impossible to get rid of. There's a strange (and very meta) scene in which Mary looks into the camera and tells her dad to smile as she takes a picture. One can tell that she really loves her father. It's the most convincing bit of acting Sofia Coppola performs throughout the film. Is it because she turned pro for one scene or because the man behind the camera is not Michael Corleone but Francis Ford Coppola? Coppola Sr. took a lot of flak for casting his daughter, but the blinding love he has for his daughter beautifully mirrors the love Michael has for Mary, particularly in this scene. It's enough to cancel out the more problematic elements of the performance. As a result, Mary's death at the end hurts.

Instead of going legitimate, Michael loses everything he cared for. The cycle of Dons and Death repeats again; it is the price that Michael has to pay, the thing for which he can never forgive himself. All of his wealth and power lead him nowhere. In the end, the great Michael Corleone, the Godfather, is just an old man who died peeling an orange and who would have given everything to escape his family history, to save his daughter.

Verdict- 4/4

The Godfather, Part III (1990) 2h 50min. R.