I’m going to watch a movie in about an hour, and there are three candidates, none of which I’ve ever seen before. I can’t decide which, so I’ll ask the people I always ask - Dopers.
The three movies are Chinatown, Spirited Away, and The Godfather. Yes, it’s true: I’ve never watched The Godfather.
[sub]This is a poll, so it could go into In My Humble Opinion, but it’s about movies, so I put it into Cafe Society. Sorry if that’s wrong.[/sub]
I’ve just seen two of them so I’m biased toward The Godfather or Chinatown and thus I’d suggest one of those. Just depends on whether you want an East Coast or a West Coast period piece. Both are superb films.
Godfather. Simply because it’s too important to miss.
Just to clarify: I’m going to watch all three eventually. I just can’t decide which one to watch right now.
Still the same advice. Same reason.
The Godfather.
Because it really is that good.
The good news is, you can’t miss. Three great movies. How do movies affect you? Do the enhance your mood? Change it?
I agree with Liberal, but if it were a dreary winter day I might go with Spirited Away, just to let a little fantastical light into the room.
Given that factor, I’ll join the Godfather group since the Christmas component doesn’t apply to Chinatown that I can recall.
Godfather it is, by a landslide. I’ll check back in three hours with impressions.
Godfather it is, by a landslide. I’ll check back in three hours with impressions.
Good choice. You never know what’s around the corner.
Suppose you go to bed tonight and stop to use the bathroom on the way. When you flush, you startle a graveling who jumps from the toilet to the light fixture and burns his foot on the incandescent light. It explodes. Shards of glass blast your scalp like shrapnel, causing you to slap yourself in the forehead. You lose your balance, falling headlong into the shower, where your face smacks against the fiberglass and bounces you backwards. In an attempt to remain on your feet, you make a grab for the water fixtures and pull them out of their sockets while the shampoo bottle you dislodged sprays your eyes with detergent, aloe, and the acids from sixteen tropical plants. Meanwhile, your cat watches with disinterest as you slam your fists, still clutching the nickle plated handles, into your eyeballs.
Now blind, will you really want to have said that you never saw The Godfather?
Warning: spoilers galore below.
I have to admit that the possibility of that sequence of events hadn’t occurred to me - and only partly because I would have to acquire a cat first.
Anyway, it’s three hours later. Let’s see if I can sum up my impressions…
Well, that was pretty fucking good.
During the wedding scenes, I kept thinking that this was one of those movies I should have seen when they first came out (and it was, but I have a really good excuse: my development of consciousness was still years away), because I had seen it imitated, lampooned, parodied and referenced to so many times that I couldn’t see the original for what it was. In particular, this applied to Brando’s performance, which has been parodied again and again, so I couldn’t take it seriously. Luckily, that feeling wore off quickly and I could enjoy the rest of the film.
Like, I imagine, most viewers of the film, what I found most interesting was the dichotomy of Vito Corleone and, later, Michael. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the opposites of good and evil shown so well within a single character. Don Corleone is a criminal, a murderer, a thief. He says straight out that he doesn’t care how any man makes a living, with “as long as it doesn’t conflict with his interests” added implicitly. But he is deeply respected, seen as a honourable man and a man of reason, and what does he care about? Honour, respect, good freaking manners, and above all the welfare of his family. Those are things we can all relate to. He is just a man who goes farther than most. Inclination or opportunity?
The movie did a great job at portraying Michael’s slide into darkness, with its completion during the chilling baptism scene, where he speaks of renouncing Satan and his works (speaking for the baby, sure, but it’s no coincidence that they have the same name) while a dozen murders are carried out at his command. After that, the final scene where he lies to his wife and then is greeted as Don Corleone merely accentuates the theme.
I did miss a couple of things. I wish there had been a scene after the death of Apollonia, somehow showing the hardening of Michael due to that event. At the very least, I would have liked to see some vengeance taken out on Fabrizio. Also, I can’t quite figure out some details of the timeline. Michael spent enough time in Sicily to court Apollonia, marry her and see her murdered. When he meets Kay, he claims to have been back for a year, but if that is true and if Connie’s baby is the one she was pregnant with when Sonny beat up her husband, that must have been the longest recorded pregnancy in the history of mankind.
These are minor quibbles, though, and the very fact that I am bothering to mention them is an indication of the movie’s greatness more than anything else. With a bad movie, there is not much point to bitch about a single little scene you wish had been in there.
I’ll have to watch it again. It’s a strong 4/5 right now, but I think it’ll pop right up to a 5 on a rescreening. And then, on to Godfather II, I guess. After that, I’ll have to follow Liberal’s implicit advice and do nothing but watch old classics until I’ve seen them all… just in case there’s a graveling in my toilet.
[sub]What the hell is a graveling? And what is it doing in my toilet?[/sub]
Sod it, I have to mention one more thing. Don Corleone’s expression when he is told that Michael shot Sollozzo. That’s when it was first made obvious that he really doesn’t wish this life on anybody, that he knows that there is something wrong with it (the point is made explicit later in the movie). The expression of pain when he realizes that Michael, the one child that had kept out of the business and kept blood off his hands, had slid right into it. That’s some primo acting there.
III is actually better than II (in my opinion), and is a prequel that will answer many of your questions about I. At any rate, you can now say you’ve seen one of the great classics. And here are gravelings.
I could, in fact, say that before too. Just not this one.
I would have recommended Chinatown, because it’s shorter and a little less “involved” (watching The Godfather is always a major ordeal for me) but it sounds as if you got into The Godfather. I like Chinatown because it’s almost anti-noir; the “tough” detective turns out to be less than tough, the femme fatale is actually manipulated at every turn, and pure, malevolent evil triumphs in the end. “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.” Anybody who thinks he’s talking about a district in L.A. has missed whole point of the film.
Part II gives you more background on Vito (including how he gets the name Corleone), and makes his distress over Michael’s involvement in the family all the more poignant. (I honestly didn’t think all that much of DeNiro’s acting in Part II the first couple of times I saw it–he’s definitely low key in comparison to other roles–but I’ve come to appreciate the subtleties, and the way he “sets up” for Marlon Brando’s earlier protrayal.)
Connie has more than one kid, so I don’t think there’s any inconsistancy there. There’s a lot going on in the movie and they don’t stop and force in unnecessary exposition; that it can make it tough going the first time you watch it (although you seem to have caught most of the points) but makes for good rewatching. Definitely a smart, demanding movie. One thing you have to be aware of, though, is that, despite being set in the midst of the Mafia (although I’ll note that this term is used nowhere until late in the second movie), but it’s less a realistic portrayal of the Italian organized crime families than a Greek tragedy set in modern time, with Michael as the fatally flawed tragic figure. He’s smart, ethical (within his own context), and dedicated, but ultimately, he’s not the man his father was, and this will destroy him and his entire family.
Stranger
The Godfather is the only classic movie from before my time (it came out more or less the year I was born) that has lived up to its hype, in my opinion.
I too would have recommended Chinatown. Seven Samurai is the only other film to have elicited as big an emotional response from me as Chinatown did. I think the Godfater I and II are fantastic films (never seen three), but they’re more in my top 15 than in my top 5, as is the case for many.
Me, too. But then I’ve never seen The Godfather. But Chinatown was both gripping and haunting.
Godfather.
I have seen Chinatown but I wasn’t blown away by it.