Plummet to Hell

Preface

It is impossible to distill ‘The Godfather’ down to a singular statement. An entire article even is not adequate to do this monumental film justice. What I can discuss, however, is the aspect of the film that stood out to me from the beginning: the gradual decay of Michael Corleone’s soul at the hands of the corruption around him.

What is the American Dream?

Though belief in said dream has waxed and waned through the years, its essence is simple: a person hailing from any nation or background has the capacity to fulfil their own desires and to make a living for themselves in the United States of America.

This belief system has long been criticized with many deeming the sentiment to be naive. The United States is a country that, to many, represents a glimmer of light in the darkness, a country with nine-million square kilometers of land ranging from the barren desertscapes of the southwest to the snow-topped peaks of the rocky mountains. It is a land where, seemingly, anyone can thrive. 

This illusion, however, is thoroughly vanquished when you take the time to address all of the issues that have plagued American society since its inception. Across the nation’s history, immigrants have been abused by both society and law enforcement, Native Americans have been systematically wiped out and relegated to remote reservations, the Capitalist system has stunted the country’s ability to fully progress with innovation being driven by profit, and so on.

We witness the effects and examples of this corruption on a daily basis, so we must take action to prevent the same from happening to ourselves.

In September 1970, an up-and-coming Italian-American director named Francis Ford Coppola was offered by Paramount Pictures to direct his first major success – ‘The Godfather’. Coppola graduated from UCLA three years earlier and learned to navigate film sets through his work with Roger Corman and through his own indie films. He worked alongside the novel’s original author, Mario Puzo, to finish the script, keeping aspects of the book that he believed would translate well cinematically and disregarding those parts he deemed as less thematically relevant. After all, the novel was a work of pulp fiction. Despite this, Puzo and Coppola were certain that underneath the novel’s fluff, there was a riveting story to be extracted concerning Michael Corleone’s transformation from a marine to the Don of his family’s empire, ruling without his father’s warmth toward his friends and his family. Whilst telling this story, Coppola also highlights the hypocrisy of American institutions and how they fail to provide for those seeking paradise in America.

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The film opens shrouded in darkness. Amerigo Bonasera’s face is in the dead-center of the screen. He tells Don Vito Corleone the story of how his daughter’s abusers had been released from court with their sentences suspended after he had reported to the police ‘like a good American’. This is a man who at one point believed in the romantic, idealized portrait of the United States that is so often sold to people. To naive Bonasera, America was a country that was supposed to provide justice to its people. Through his own experiences, this was proven false. The film’s stance on the matter, though, is not so black and white. Bonasera begins his narrative with how he was able to make a living for himself as an undertaker through America’s free-market Capitalist system. Thus, his experience as an immigrant highlights the ironic dichotomy of the American Dream: you are given the ability to make a life for yourself, but with the ever-lingering risk of being betrayed by the same forces that gave you life.

In the end, Bonasera does not go to Vito because he respects him; he goes to Vito because he is in desperate need of Justice. Because the nation that he wished so badly to be assimilated into had proven that it did not care for him the way that he cared for it. Perhaps, though, Bonasera is still holding on to a lingering hope of redemption. After all, he does begin his monologue with the declaration of ‘I believe in America’. Does he still truly believe? Or are his words symptomatic of a man who is living in delusion who wants to believe once again?

‘You found paradise in America, had a good trade, made a good living, and there were courts of law. You didn’t need a friend like me.’

The Godfather shows self awareness in his conclusion. If the nation were as idealistic and free of corruption and injustice as Bonasera once believed, he would not exist and would be rendered obsolete. To him, he exists to provide to his people what America cannot.

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In a sensational, career-defining performance, Al Pacino plays Michael Corleone who acts as the audience surrogate into the post-war era of the New York underworld. Due to the real-world gravity of the film’s themes concerning the disillusionment of the American Dream, his gradual fall from grace is tragic not only on an emotional level but also on a philosophical one.

‘That's my family Kay; it’s not me’

This is the sentiment Michael holds and shares with his then girlfriend, Kay, at his sister’s wedding after detailing to her the story of his father and Hollywood superstar Johnny Fontane. More specifically, how his father arranged for the termination of Fontane’s contract between himself and a certain bandleader by ‘making an offer he couldn’t refuse’. This sentiment is vital as it marks the starting point of Michael Corleone’s character arc across the film. 

Michael is a man who, despite being born into one of the five New York crime families, wishes to stay true to the pure and just America he believes in. After all, he did walk into the party alongside his non-Italian girlfriend wearing a dark-green military uniform plastered with badges, in order to convey to the guests of the party (and, more importantly, his family) his own desire to differentiate himself from the people he grew up with.

As the film progresses, however, Michael is slowly drawn further and further into the family's business due to forces out of his control, becoming disillusioned with his prior beliefs. He is exposed to a New York underworld teeming with greedy leaders, pulling the strings of people in legal positions of power. He is abused by crooked cops willing to turn a blind eye to any illegal doings. He is faced with the immense violence that befalls his family in the name of business.

‘It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.’

Throughout the film, we are constantly reminded that the heinous actions of these gangsters are driven not by personal motives but instead by financial gain. Essentially, these carefully-coordinated power plays, these elaborate assassinations, these extensive deals between the families all play out as a result of unrestrained capitalism, which is what the film argues to be the main contributing factor plaguing the idealized American Dream. Visually, this idea is demonstrated through, Director of Photography, Gordon Willis’ sublime use of harsh overhead lighting, obscuring the eyes of anyone in frame -- cold, impersonal.

These effects are also demonstrated through the manipulation and corruption of those who are in supposed legitimate positions of power (i.e. Captain McClusky who is bought out by Solozzo and paid to turn a blind eye to the attempted assassination of Vito). Also mentioned are the politicians that The Godfather holds ‘in his pocket’, once again showcasing the ease at which those who are ostensibly safeguarding the nation can be bastardized in a society where economic growth is the driving force.

Michael Corleone breaks down any and all of his own barriers between himself and the family business when he kills both Virgil Solozzo and McClusky in a small restaurant tucked away in the Bronx. This results in his two-year-long exile in Sicily, where he patiently awaits his return to New York under the oversight of his father’s friend Don Tammasino. There, he falls in love with Appolonia, a young woman from the town of Corleone, and they eventually get married.

What his exile to the Mediterranean represents on a thematic level is a chance to escape the depravity of existence in America. In Corleone, life moves slowly and it appears as if Michael can almost be happy.

This entire sequence is carefully engineered to evoke a sense of nostalgia from the viewer, regardless of whether one has been to Italy. At this point, Gordon Willis’ cinematography takes a massive departure from the underexposed images of New York, instead, favoring these spectacular wide-shots of the Sicilian landscape, flooded with warm sepia tones – akin to how he shot the opening wedding sequence. It is also the first instance in the film where Nino Rota’s iconic theme plays. Him and Coppola decided here to use the music Rota had debuted in a film released fourteen years prior called ‘La Fortunella’, believing that it would be effective in imbuing this part of Michael Corleone’s journey with a sense of wistfulness and sentimentality.

This geographical repositioning provides Michael with a period to reflect. Perhaps he can escape the cycle of violence he has found himself entrenched in for the purpose of, instead, leading a life more simple and true; a life where he is not blind to the forces of American capitalism surrounding him, plaguing himself and his family.

Before he can make a decision, his wife is killed. An explosive rigged in Michael’s car by one of his bodyguards who was bought out by the Barzini family back in New York. The debauchery he had almost escaped had caught up to him seven-thousand kilometers away. With no other choice, he returns to his family compound in Long Island.

There, his disillusionment with the United States is fully solidified upon his reuniting with Kay. He shares with her his belief that his family, it turns out, is not so different from other more ‘legitimate’ institutions. A belief that had slowly formed during the film's events, replacing his former delusions of what America really was.

‘You know how naive you sound? Senators and presidents don’t have people killed!’

‘Who's being naive, Kay?’

Politicians are those people looking over public administration, dealing with foreign diplomacy, handling national budgets, and so on. At one point in time, these were the figureheads that the people of the United States looked up to. The people that the youth aspired to succeed. This was the case prior to (approximately) the early seventies, when public consensus on the reliability of politicians to look out for the nation’s best interests dramatically adjusted. Incidents like Richard Nixon’s infamous Watergate scandal contributed to this changing sentiment. The crime itself and his cabinet’s attempts to cover it up absolutely baffled and disgusted the public. It was not a coincidence that The Godfather was released during this period of re-evaluation.

Michael Corleone’s belief that even politicians have the capacity to be self-serving (at the cost of those they are meant to be safeguarding) reflected the suspicions of the era. Suspicions that continue to the present day, with public outrage over the Trump Administration’s own abuse of power in his attempts to undermine institutions which have forever served as pinnacles of western democracy. But, in the end, it is also a false equivalence between politics as usual and outright murder and thuggery, showcasing the new Don’s ignorance to the man he has become.

The transformation that Michael Corleone undergoes in ‘The Godfather’ is bittersweet. Though we are aware that he has betrayed the worldview he once believed in, succumbing to the corruption so apparent around him, we as the audience do still feel a sense of triumph. After all, by the end of the film, Michael has secured his family’s position at the apex of the underworld, planning out the assassinations of all the parties out to get him in the absolutely iconic ‘Baptism of Fire’ sequence. Ultimately, Michael is trapped in a hell of his own creation. He is the head of an empire that he will fail to oversee without alienating those around him and further dissociating with his past self. Also, the seeds of the further tragedy that will ensue in ‘The Godfather: Part II’ have already been planted. 

Corleone’s knowledge was enough to distort his character and his worldview, but we must fight to prevent our society from succumbing to the same fate. Coppola urges us, first, to look outward in order to reflect on the corruption that runs so rampant in the world. And, second, to look inward to see just how much said corruption affects our souls.