At the same time I was revisiting the Marx Brothers early films I felt the need to hit the Godfather films once again and engage in some serious pathos over the notions of what’s right, what’s wrong and how far is too far in your attempts to keep your family - both extended and immediate - safe and provided for.
Any criticism, even of Godfather Part III, is at this point going to be redundant of something. It’s enough at this stage in the lives of it, as well as The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, to say that this sweeping epic is one that manages to combine both the grandiose and the intimate.
In that way it’s actually sort of the thematic predecessor to movies like There Will Be Blood that present a very small story on a large stage. That later movie also engages in a similar sort of debate about achieving success in life despite that success coming at the expense of any real, lasting human connections.
The main problem (OK, I’ll go down this road briefly) with Part III is that everyone involved is just trying to damn hard, from Coppola on down. There’s too much of a conscious effort to bring this in line with the previous installments rather than just letting the story progress naturally. That manages to actually take away from the un-forced story unfolding that went on in the first two films. Still, all three form a necessary arc that completes the saga in, really, the only way it could have possibly turned out.
Originally posted on:
Chris Thilk