Movie of the Week: The Godfather

Alexa: It’s easy to look back on some movies that are often heralded as among the best of all time and feel a little disappointed. Maybe it’s been so overhyped that it just doesn’t live up to expectations, or maybe other films that came after it have improved upon the formula it originated so much that you feel underwhelmed when you finally see it. But “The Godfather” completely stands the test of time. It really is one of the best movies ever made. Yes, it paved the way for a slew of other great mafia films, but none of them detract from what “The Godfather” created. At its heart, the film is an epic character study. Yes, it’s long, clocking in at about three hours, but every bit of that time feels necessary. It covers about 10 years of this family’s experience, and every exchange is essential to understanding Michael’s journey. “The Godfather” features a roster of actors who have gone on to give plenty of other dynamite performances, but this movie remains a career-best for many of them, particularly Marlon Brando and Al Pacino. It’s an introspective story in so many ways, but it also boasts some of the most visually dynamic and emotionally compelling scenes in cinema history. Sonny’s death scene is of course iconic, but it’s one of the final sequences in the film that always gets me - when Michael peacefully attends the baptism of Connie’s baby while his associates murder the dons of the other crime families. It’s an incredibly impactful scene that signals Michael’s transition as his father’s successor is complete.

Joel: I sort of wish I had more time between watching The Godfather and writing this to finish digesting the movie. The Godfather is the sort of movie that stays with you long after it’s over. It plays over and over again in your mind, it feels like I’m still processing the movie even a few days after having seen it.

Perhaps first and foremost, The Godfather is an incredibly long movie. Coming up at three hours and taking place over a timespan that had to have been close to ten years, The Godfather is an epic film by every definition of the word. You can watch the characters shape and evolve as the movie unfolds, their actions having long lasting ramifications on future events. Despite the three hour runtime, there isn’t a scene that feels wasted. It’s not that every scene feels like it serves a purpose in progressing the story forward, but that many scenes are designed to serve multiple purposes. For example, early in the movie Vito Corleone meets with several people who are asking him favors as The Godfather. This is a scene designed to introduce several of the main characters and to give the audience an idea of how the business of the family works, but it’s more than that. Every request that is asked of Vito Corleone on the day of his daughter’s wedding is later a favor returned at some point in the movie.  The story structure of this movie is incredibly well done as it allows the events to unfold at their own pace, giving each character and each plot point the amount of time it needs to have the proper impact on the audience, but at the same time making sure to not waste a moment of the movie.

Despite him not appearing in large chunks of the movie (and having less screen time that Al Pacino who played his son) Marlon Brando was nominated and won the academy award for best lead actor for his work on this movie. It’s easy to see why Brando feels like the lead actor in the movie. His performance in the movie is not only one of the best performances in Brando’s career, but is also one of the best examples of film acting that we have today. Brando, commands every moment he’s on the screen, and is able to adjust his performance to show the character aging of the decade that the movie takes place. Brando is a standout performance in a movie that’s filled with standout performances. Al Pacino's role of Michael was clearly career defining, with his role in The Godfather being the first of four academy award nominations in a row. It’s almost funny to look at the Oscar nominations from that year, as The Godfather not only took home best picture, but over half of the best supporting actor nominations went to Godfather actors.

The Godfather is a movie that has weight to it. It feels complex and important. It’s a movie that not only demands your attention while you watch, but it demands your attention long after the movie is over. It’s able to take a 10+ year story and make it work across a three hour runtime. It’s epic and intimate all at the same time. It’s both the story of organized crime and a single family, or even a single person as Michael is the character that develops the most across the runtime of the movie. It’s easy to see why, even all these years later The Godfather still tops many lists of the best movie of all time.

Chris: I enjoy The Godfather trilogy even with all its faults (looking at you, part 3) so I’ll gladly admit that this was my movie because I pounced immediately when I saw they were on Netflix now. There’s a line in Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe that comes to mind when I think of The Godfather story: “Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight.” It’s a line full of regret that a great potential wasn’t met and that is how I feel about Michael’s character. It’s repeated throughout the movie that Michael was never supposed to take part in “the family business” and Don Vito had bigger, legitimate expectations of his youngest son. So the root of the story is almost a Shakespearean tragedy of Michael’s descent into a life of being the head of a crime family. The Godfather is a slow, long movie but there are very few wasted moments during the 3 hour runtime as it all builds and all the pieces fall into place by the end. It feels weird to say this but there was event a moment that felt a bit rushed and that was the sequence following Sunny’s murder and then a few minutes later, Michael’s wife in Italy is in an exploding car and finally, Michael is proposing to Kay within the next couple minutes. Sure, Michael did say that he had been back in the States about a year but to the audience it all feels a bit sudden. The pacing of the movie feels purposeful and meticulous except for those moments when the audience hasn’t had a chance to process two murders before Michael is proposing. Obviously, Fredo is a character that seems like he should have a bigger part but seems pretty dull and unexplored by comparison to everyone else in the Corleone family and even Connie feels pretty one-dimensional and only exists to be hysterical every few minutes. However, I do have the benefit of having seen all the movies previously so I know both will get their chance.

Jason: You can call me a cinema pleb if you want to but I had not seen this movie before now. The Godfather has long been lauded as one of the best movies ever committed to celluloid. I can see where it gets that distinction as far as cinematography, acting, script, and all that goes but when it gets right down to it, this movie is long. Long and slow. Those two qualities often lead to the word “boring.” There are intense scenes of hits and fights but everything in between just drags on forever. I know the others have waxed poetic about the amazing qualities of this movie, about how it grabs your attention and doesn’t let go, about how every scene has purpose and builds on the past, about how it tells a ten year story without feeling like a slog.  And I wish I could agree with them. To be completely honest, I watched this one with one eye while playing video games with the other. Otherwise, I would have fallen asleep in my desk chair. I’m not saying that it should have been cut down at all. Everything DID have meaning. Well, most everything. Some of the scenes in Italy were a bit too drawn out and there was just so much talking throughout the whole thing. There are some long movies that I can sit through just fine, like the LOTR movies. There are some long movies I can’t watch at all, like Titanic. And there there’s this one. Great movie. Just too long.

I swear I don’t write these reviews just to be contrary to the others. I just always happen to fall on the opposite side of the fence for some reason.