Theme versus Subject Matter: A Minor Gripe with The Godfather Part II

The Godfather Part II is a movie whose thesis is nearly lost in the complexities of its subject matter. This is exactly what happened in the original, but the ‘problem’ is amplified here because of one of the dual storylines. Vito Corleone is a much more interesting character this time around, despite his mass presence in The Godfather. The origin story approach for the sequel was an inspired decision, but it makes Michael’s continued saga seem less impressive than it was in the first movie. He’s no longer the innocent bystander turned crime boss – that’s Vito’s role now – he’s a madman losing his grip on the family. The reinforcement of the final moments of The Godfather, where Michael closes the doors on his wife, effectively making the choice he swore he wouldn’t at the start of the film, and losing himself to crime, was played out logically, but somewhat messily.

Organized crime as a subject matter brings with it a need to delve into complications of family, betrayal, justice, and business, and these are tropes akin to cyberpunk’s artificial intelligences, body modifications, and virtual realities. Because The Godfather was the movie that revised the previously very pulpy genre of crime fiction, it was the original serious crime drama. It introduced to the world those tropes, and since The Godfather Part II came only two years later, the filmmakers didn’t think much in the ways of post-modernism when the modern was so recent. So The Godfather Part II embodies these affairs, and finds Michael involved in hearings and playing families against each other and being betrayed. In premise, all of the these things are good and necessary: they create the plot and give a reason for Michael’s decline. But for the movewatcher like me, they also create situations that don’t click.

All too often in the movie do the characters go deeper and deeper into the complications of the genre staples, and scenes of dialogue that are necessary to the plot stretch out the length and tamper with the pacing. Alone, this wouldn’t be such a bad thing. It would be a slightly overly complex movie that nearly dilutes the main theme. But when each scene involving Vito Corleone is so tight and obviously important to its story arc, Michael’s overall three-quarters of the film appears bloated.

If The Godfather Part II was entirely Vito Corleone’s rise to power, and The Godfather Part III was Michael’s continuing saga ending in the death of Fredo and Michael again closing the door on his wife, that would be perfect. Plans for The Godfather Part III apparently were to repeat the formula in Part II, but with Tom Hagen’s origin story. That didn’t happen, but I don’t know what did because I haven’t seen the third installment, arguable the most infamous sequel ever. I think that the parallel between Vito and Michael would be more profound over two movies, rather than just blatant within the confines of a single movie. Overall, The Godfather Part II is probably an unecessary movie afterall, as it doesn’t say a whole lot new. I’m glad it does exist though, because it’s a better watch than the first, and the first was already famously good.

I would also contrast The Godfather Part II with Goodfellas, as the Martin Scorsese mob flick is very streamlined, despite having a comparable number of characters and relationships mixing and interacting. Goodfellas also has a similar theme, where the family dynamic between goodfellas in the end doesn’t mean shit because everyone’s looking out for themselves in a world that’s organized to be violent. People losing themselves to the life of crime that comes with money and power is shared across both movies, but Goodfellas played out much more straightforwardly, and benefitted. Ultimately the Michael bits are overly complicated for their purpose, but this has to be because the genre walls are two strict.

The original Godfather has a plot that could not be told many other ways and still arrive at the end point with the same level of understanding for where each character is. The intent for The Godfather Part II is to further Michael’s story, showing how he is driving his family into the ground in his attempt to drive it forward. More importantly, we see how his character is deteriorating, which was implied at the close of the first movie. Because the first bit, the family matters, is so crucial to the second, we need all this stuff about business relations and assassinations and deals. Unfortunately, it could be done any number of ways, and I think the most effective would be an approach similar to Goodfellas – show us just what we need to see, otherwise we could get distracted, and even the parallel between Vito and Michael is made less obvious than the film’s structure would propose.

Not a major problem, and certainly not one everyone would have, but I think it’s an interesting thing to see where a filmmaker will place focus on – the themes or the plot. In the long run, the overdone plot of The Godfather Part II makes it seem a bit draggy, where the first certainly was not. Whenever 50’s era New York came on screen I kind of shifted in my seat, waiting for the next time we could see Robert DeNiro, because his story was more interesting and less complicated.

Prelude to Blade Runner Part II: The Androids and the Critics

I should probably qualify this post; it isn’t meant to be an attack on Roger Ebert. Though he and I don’t always see eye to eye (Hereafter), his criticisms of scifi is generally unbiased and he was an Asimov kind of guy as a kid so I can respect that. However, his initial review of Blade Runner was exactly why movies like Blade Runner are being tampered with by the noncreative partners of production teams: the death of art.

The documentary on the making of Blade Runner, Dangerous Days, displayed two things, and I mentally connected them. There was a chapter dedicated to the post production and test screenings and all that. Someone famously decided that Harrison Ford should record a noir voiceover to clear up some of the ‘confusing’ elements. This was not the original intent of Ridley Scott, whose best film was being changed, though he eventually agreed to them. At the end of the behind-the-scenes doc, in discussion of the polarizing effect the film had on audiences, a big old block of white text faded onto black: an excerpt from Ebert’s review:

“He seems more concerned with creating his film worlds than populating them with plausible characters, and that’s the trouble this time. Blade Runner is a stunningly interestingly visual achievement, but a failure as a story.”

This is the classic failure of critics in evaluating movies like Blade Runner and Once Upon a Time in the West. These movies forgo conventional characterization and storytelling in order to convey certain ideas. Calling the characters flat is ultimately defeating: it is not their purpose to be round, dynamic characters. Deckard’s arc is compelling, but dangerously unique. He descends toward inhumanity, but never takes the time to break down and cry or have a tense argument with other characters. Even Clive Owen in Children of Men did one of those, and that’s another movie that’s seemingly cold.

That of course is beside the fact that Roy Batty is one of the most intellectually and emotionally stimulating characters in science fiction (um, that is not to damn him with the faintest of praise). I assume he would later come to realize that as he did with Once Upon a Time in the West, but critics in that line of work need to critisize when they cannot praise, and I’m using the traditional definition of critisize, not ‘analyze.’ If a movie has one apparent problem, you’ll jump on it instead of viewing the work as a whole.

The problem is that the ‘weakness’ often cited in Blade Runner is intentional, but critics are fooled into thinking it was an artistic mistake.

“Seeing the movie again, even in this revised version, I still felt the human story did not measure up to the special effects.” (Ebert on the Director’s Cut)

Even if the human story was absent as Ebert had thought the first and second time reviewing the film, why does it have to exist to make the movie complete? Perhaps if it had aspirations of a human story and failed it would matter, but Blade Runner‘s story is so unconventional I don’t think that argument could be made. A formulaic Hollywood blockbuster with a boring conventional love story was 2009’s Star Trek. I didn’t care about the romance between Spock and Zoe Saldana, but that movie was still kickass regardless.

I think that’s where critisicm becomes subjective, and then that throws into question the validity of the medium. You might agree with Ebert when he says that special effects shouldn’t outweigh a human story, or you might agree with me and say that both have places in film. Arguments can be made for both, but I don’t like it when a critic steers somebody away because of their belief. Playing into this theme of special effects vs. humanity is the movie I always go back to – The Thing. Don’t let somebody tell you that the effects minimize the human story, because that might make you overlook it. Whether or not you agree that the effects outdo the script after watching it is inconsequential, the point is to watch it (because it’s awesome).

I hate to say this, but this issue of special effects vs. human story, at least in Blade Runner, sees the younger Roger Ebert ‘not getting it.’ Blade Runner is a philosophical look at humanity, and like its brethren in Solaris or 2001, it’s romantic or otherwise ‘human’ elements seem weak. Like I said earlier, this is intentional. But if critics don’t ‘get it,’ then movies after Blade Runner might not try to be so unconventional. Maybe Blade Runner gets slammed by critics and makes ostensibly zero dollars and zero cents, and maybe each subsequent cut of the movie is tampered with because somebody somewhere thinks everybody everywhere won’t understand.

This is when movies aren’t just passive entertainment – you have to be on the lookout for the stuff that makes Blade Runner good outside the production design. And maybe that’s an imperfection, that the philosophy is too cryptic. It was to me the first time I saw it, and certainly if I hadn’t researched Once Upon a Time in the West before watching it, I wouldn’t have understood that its post-modernism paralleled and enhanced the commentary on the passing of an era.

“The “human story,” as I think of it, involves practical tests to determine if an individual is a replicant or not, and impractical tests (such as love) to determine how much that matters to (a) people, if they are in love with a replicant, and (b) replicants, if they know they are replicants.” (Ebert on the Final Cut)

The whole Blade Runner Review Trilogy he’s got going shows that Blade Runner is a movie that defies initial impressions. You might watch it and be like, “what?” That’s what I did. I wasn’t necessarily sucked into the visuals, but I was distracted by the pace of the Director’s Cut. I was bored to tears, but that was before I came to appreciate production design and cyberpunk as a visual subgenre. Then I read the book, forgot the book, and watched the movie again after listening to some podcasts that told me to think a little bit. So I did.

I guess that’s why I’m gonna write this blog/novel about the movie – it really is the greatest science-fiction movie ever made, but it’s a complicated affair. What version do I watch? Why was it so boring? How is it linked to the book? What’s Soldier all about? …Heh, you weren’t thinking that last one…

In the end though, Ebert is a guy I respect. He’s one who likes good movies. I’m just the guy who takes them way too seriously.

For more on Blade Runner, check out The Blade Runner Directory