Why would you *not* like The Godfather? (Rather lengthy)

Cafe Society
1

This past weekend, I had a friend of mine over to watch The Godfather, as he’d never seen it before, and was curious to see it since it’s so highly touted by me (it’s my favorite movie of all time) and by film fans in general. His verdict? He liked it. He actually liked it “a little better than [he] thought [he] would”. On a ten scale, he’d give it a 7.8 (said he).

Nonetheless, he did have some criticisms/reasons he didn’t/doesn’t love the movie as much as I and countless thousands of others do. First off, he’s a young 'un (27), and he doesn’t care for what he terms “old” movies. He also thought that at nearly three hours, the movie was longer than it needed to be and that it dragged in parts (his general cut off for movie running times is two hours and fifteen minutes; after that, he starts to get bored… except one of his favorite movies is Titanic, which is a helluva lot longer than two hours and fifteen minutes, and he thinks exactly 0.0% drags or is boring).

But his main criticism was that he couldn’t really empathize and sympathize with any of the characters because they were people who knowingly participated in an “evil” lifestyle, and so he couldn’t summon up much feeling for them when that lifestyle ended up biting them in the ass. Now, a bit (more) background on my friend: he’s a born-again evangelical Christian who nonetheless doesn’t see a problem with enjoying watching horror movies or gross out comedies (he loves 'em), so he’s not exactly a prude, though he doesn’t swear or drink alcohol anymore.

Now for my take on the movie (and my response to him): Are the characters, if not “evil”, then prone to making ill-advised life choices? Without doubt. But by and large, when I start watching a movie (and always when it’s a movie of quality), I take that movie and its characters on its own terms. I don’t judge the characters by my own moral compass while I’m watching the movie, as that would inhibit me from getting into the movie and whatever story it was going to tell. In other words, I usually have no problem suspending my disbelief (as an aside, that’s why die-hard trekkies (yes, trekkies) have always puzzled me/made me laugh/annoyed me. Is it a good, compelling story? It is? Then sit back and don’t fucking worry if every fucking thing that happens jibes with fucking canon), which is why I can watch movies about rapists and murderers and child molesters and fucking Adolph-fucking-Hitler and feel maybe the tiniest measure of sympathy or empathy for them as portrayed on screen, but not IRL.

And as to length, I feel that if a director wants to make a four hour movie and can make it compelling, then I’m all for that. Yes, brevity is something to aspire to, but not in all instances and in all things.
But anyway. Those of you who don’t like The Godfather, why exactly don’t you like it? Is it for any of the reasons my friend, well, doesn’t dislike it, exactly, but surely doesn’t like it as much as me and so many others do? And those of you who do like it, do any of my friend’s points hold even a drop or two of water?

And speaking to the larger issue of movies (and books and TV shows) in general: Are there subjects or characters that are so off-putting, so repellent that you patently refuse to watch (or read) movies containing them? If so, what are they? And if not, then do you feel that people who do have limits along those lines are sort of ninnies, or not?

Please discuss.

2

My complaints with the Godfather are that its pacing is anachronistic in today’s world and I found the editing to be distractingly choppy.

No, and absolutely yes.

Color me unsurprised that a guy whose favorite movie is Titanic didn’t love The Godfather. I’m more surprised he didn’t hate it.

3

I dislike much of the gangster genre because it is emotionally shallow… I feel like it’s emotional porn for little boys, in the same way Twilight is emotional porn for girls.

I absolutely love The Sopranos because it is emotionally sophisticated.

Also: the experience of finally watching The Godfather was much like the experience of reading Hamlet or Macbeth for the first time. It was one cliche after another… and the fact that it was the ORIGINAL cliche didn’t make it less so, to me. To my gut reaction, anyway.

4

Your friend’s complaint doesn’t seem that strange to me. I’ve had similar feelings, and I’m certainly not the only one who has issues with watching movies about despicable people, generally, and members of the mob specifically. It can be difficult to empathize with people who do horrible things, particularly considering that the mob is also often glamorized. I had a lot of trouble getting through Goodfellas because I found every single character completely repugnant.

The complaint about pacing is also valid. It isn’t that it’s a bad thing, but plenty of people have difficulty with movies made decades before they were born. There are movies from the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s that I’m sure are wonderful triumphs of artistry, but I’ll never know because I can’t sit through them without falling asleep.

All that said, I love the Godfather (and its first sequel) and have watched it dozen of times. I’m a year younger than your friend.

5

I decided to look at the voting page for The Godfather on the IMDb:

I had wondered if there was any tendency for younger people to like it less. As you can see, there’s no significant difference in its rating across age groups. There’s also no significant difference in its rating among U.S. and non-U.S. viewers. There’s a small difference in its rating according to sex. Men are slightly more likely to like it.

So if your friend likes it less than you, it’s not because he’s younger.

6

The characters are morally repugnant. That doesn’t change that I and II are great movies (and III is quite good) because these movies are classics of tragedy. Michael may die peacefully at the end of III, but his life is hell itself from the moment he starts planning Salozzo’s murder in I.

7

I also find the characters in The Godfather morally repugnant, and that makes me uninterested in the movie. FTR, I am neither a fundamentalist nor a christian. I think the movie and book glorified the mob - also off-putting.

I saw the end of Godfather 3, and it was terrible. My wife saw G2 as a free campus flick, and felt overcharged. It could have ended at several places and it didn’t.

Overall, TypoBob says don’t check it out.

8

It insists upon itself.

Somebody had to say it.

Actually I like The Godfather, so never mind.

9

I watched them when I was a teenager. I found them to be dry and long, personally.

Also, as an eye-talian Canadian myself, I don’t like to indulge in mobster movies as a point of principle. I’m never that guy who complains incessantly about being oppressed. But still. It’s bad enough that I have Chef Boyardee and the Jersey Shore to deal with…:frowning:

10

So you’re saying you don’t judge the movie by your standard but let it insist upon itself? (Someone had to say it again.)

To the criticisms above: The Godfather doesn’t go into as much detail as its sequel on Don Corleone’s choices, but I’m wondering if he saw the Young Vito segments of GF2 if he’d still consider it “ill advised life choices”. Vito became a criminal and ultimately the Godfather because he saw people who did play by the rules, lived good and virtuous and Christian lives, and all it got them was bullied by those who didn’t. Vito himself is a hard working husband/father who has lost his parents, his brother, and then his job to the mobsters, and in a way, to borrow from Richard III, he is tempted by the devil to do good- to take over from Fanucci not just for himself but also for the benefit of the people of his section of Little Italy. There’s a good moral discussion to be had there, one that Vito himself says best:

As for their choices biting them in the ass, no question it happens to Sonny and to the Turk and McCloskey and Carlo, but many characters from the mob side come off no worse than the undertaker in the first scene of the movie whose daughters attackers are let off with a wrist slap and who would have no justice at all were it not for the Don (would be interested to hear your friend’s answer to “If you were in Bonasera’s situation and had a Godfather, would you go to him?”), or the nurse whose life is in danger for helping Michael (true she wasn’t the target, but little doubt if they’d found her hiding Vito they’d have killed her), or Apollonia or others. The theater owner in GF2 (which I know your friend hasn’t seen) whose daughter is almost disfigured because his payment to Fanucci is short or the merchant who can’t pay both Vito and Fanucci’s nephew- same deal- they did nothing wrong and still get screwed. Vito has just decided “Well if I’m going to get screwed anyway, I might as well hit back, and help others to hit back”.

I recognize of course the Godfather is romanticized and operatic more than lifelike: I don’t think Al Capone for example had any real motives other than “get rich and kill anybody who stands in your way doing it”- but it is ultimately a morality tale and not a black and white one. Of course it’s hard to “see it for the first time again” with somebody since you know so much more about the characters; they must be about the most discussed fictional characters of the last 40 years.

11

I found it hard to relate to them–not so much because they were “evil” but because the movie was a bit slow moving, and I didn’t feel like I got a sense of what made the characters tick. With Sopranos, same lifestyle but very different feel, I felt like every episode gave you a bit of insight into a character or two so you really got to know them. I tend to prefer stuff that’s more character driven in general, though.

12

I never finished watching the first in the series. Never tried the others.

I found it boring and hard to follow. Completely agree with others about the pacing. I also got really tired of hearing Marlon Brando mumble.

To be fair, I have a lot of trouble in movies generally when it comes to telling the characters apart (I’m bad at faces, especially in 2-D), and that can make it difficult to tell exactly what’s going on. I had a TON of trouble with this particular movie that way.

As for disliking it because of the characters, or because of the choices they made…no, that wasn’t an issue for me at all. I didn’t LIKE the characters especially (those who I could tell apart, anyway), but I’ve enjoyed a number of movies and many books in which the characters are total creeps.

I’m 50, by the way.

13

My only complaint with The Godfather is the third film truly sucked. That was a boring and unnecessary piece of crap. The first two I enjoyed thoroughly. The sries really should have ended with the second one, I think. I had read Mario Puzo’s book before the film came out and enkoyed that, too.

I recall watching an interview with one of the consultants on the film, and you know the part where Sonny gets riddled with bullets at the toll booth? And he’s trying to run at his shooters in one last act of defiance? The consultant said he carefully explained to Francis Ford Coppola why that would be impossible in real life, that Sonny would in all reality be chopped into Swiss cheese and die in under a second. He said Coppola listened to the entire explanation politely and then told him: “But this is how I want to do it.” A good scene, though!

14

This is exactly the point that I was trying to get across to him. These movies are tragedies. And, as often as not, tragedies, from Shakespeare to the present, usually involve seriously flawed people because, news flash: human beings are flawed. And really, how many people would be willing to accept a 100% innocent person meeting a tragic end? I think it likely that the vast majority of the viewing public would be actively angry after watching such a movie (though I wouldn’t count myself in their number, as I’m a sadistic, morbid li’l fuck).

15

[quote=“Sampiro, post:10, topic:556192”]

Interestingly enough, my friend said that one of his favorite, most felt-at-a-gut-level scenes in the movie was Santino finding a bruised Connie, and then proceeding to beat the living hell out of Carlo. Like I said, interesting.

16

damn kids these days have no patience to sit through long films

I blame the youtube

17

I don’t have a problem with the fact that the characters in The Godfather are all bad people. I don’t have to like or empathize with fictional characters in order to find them compelling. Coppola and Puzo certainly were not apologizing for the characters - they recognized them as morally bankrupt people.

I can see the point about the “look” of the film. It’s not an issue to me - I grew up in the sixties and seventies, so this is the way movies are supposed to look to me. And I’ve watched endless movies made since then and endless movies made before then, so I’ve had a wide experience with various styles of filmmaking - I can make the mental shift to a different style. But if you’re used to one style, something different will be distracting - you’ll keep noticing how the movie was made and that can make it difficult to watch the movie itself.

18

it is slow, I can understand why some may have an issue with that but to be fair, it needs to be.
This is a saga, stretched over many years with gradual shifts and changes and I don’t think you can get that across without taking time to do it.

Also, one of the points about Michael (and Vito) is that most of the time they are calm, still, considered, contained, businesslike…boring perhaps?
That is their nature and it serves the movie to have that calm as a counterpoint to those such as Sonny and to the violence and evil that they are capable of.
But that does mean that they are not Bruce Willis in a vest, The action is, most of the time, underneath, concealed and contained.
Perhaps that general calm translates into boring for some people, personally I find it fascinating.

19

Well, this is why I don’t like the movie. They are bad guys. They are anti-heros.

Yes, it is a very well made movie. Every aspect of the film is superb. But, just like your friend, I don’t feel sorry for them at all and in fact I don’t feel they ever get their comeuppance so to speak.

So I like the movie. I admire the movie. I don’t love it.
PS, I’m not a born again Christian.

20

I dont dislike the film, but my reaction to the film, and to the OP, is:

“They arent as good as you think they are”.

I dont mean that snarkly. Its just I found them to be kinda boring instead of the much praised giants of cinema many people describe.

Actually, they probably suffer from the fact that I seen Goodfellas and Casino first, and vastly prefer those films. I even prefer to read Puzo’s book than watch the films.
ETA: The whole moral/bad guy issue is not a factor for me. Not at all.