Dear Internet,
Today
was a long day for only having watched a single movie. But that is understandable considering that
the film lasts a solid three hours plus.
On top of that, I had a technical problem that I did not realize was occurring
until about half way through. For one
reason or another, the subtitles that are supposed to appear during the scenes
where Italian was being spoken did not appear.
At first, I though the film was repeating its stylistic choice of not
including subtitles during those parts, but after a number of lengthy scenes
occurred I was forced to look up if this was the case since my settings seemed
to not work. What ended up happening was
that I found suitable subtitles for the whole film and had to go back and
re-watch a number of scenes that I thought were being reliant upon body
language instead of the dialog directly.
So, after that headache I am a bit tired, but I know I will still find a
bunch of stuff to say. Again, I will let
the All Knowing Wiki do my plot synopsis since this is a film that makes me
feel like the last lobster in the tank realizing where the rest of my friends
have gone, but that might be a bit harsh for "The Godfather Part II."
"Part
II" has got a lot going behind it.
IT has got the same group of people that made the first film so
great. Francis Ford Coppola comes back
to direct it and nearly every actor from the first film is there to reprise
their roles, provided that they lived through the first one. The cinematography style is still somewhat
there. The music and soundtrack is there. Although I did notice a low quality audio
track but I can throw that criticism out because I know it was because of
factors not reliant upon the film. The
story is entertaining considering that the film rocks back and forth between
Vito and Mike during different time frames.
Despite all these things, "Part II" is not only unable to live
up to its predecessor but also has trouble standing on its own.
The
biggest problem for the movie would have to be the jumping back between the two
protagonists. While the jumping itself
is not all that bad, albeit it being a little quick and takes a second to
register, the two plotlines have troubles for different reasons. For the Vito storyline, it is obvious to show
how he became a head of a mob family in the States. While the first film did not leave any holes about
him being the head of the Coleone family, this was mostly due to the fact that
the film did not have to question his status.
The second film wants to make it something important obviously, but it
has trouble explaining why it is important to understand Vito's journey from
child fugitive to Godfather. Vito's
eventual murder of his father's killer can be shown as about the only "non-business
killing" he committed so far and is thus important to understand him, but
that would be relying on his own description of what is murder and what is
business. One has to look at his story and compare it to
Mike's story.
Mike's
story seems to depict a downward spiral as compared to that of his father's,
which shows his rise as both a mob boss and his gaining of a family. Mike's story is only half of that at most. He is fully moved to outside Vegas and has a
large amount of prospects and people in his pocket. However, short of initial temperament after
an attempt on his life is made, his quest to find out who tried to do him in
was more driven by his self called business sense rather than the desire to
know who was willing to kill his family to get to him. As the film continues, we see his family
falls apart. His sister becomes
estranged, only to eventually come back to him.
His brother betrays him and is killed in the end. His wife commits a horrible sin against him
and is sent away. He acted in a fatherly
manner to his children only in the early part of the film and then became cold
to them by the end. At the end of the
film, Mike only has his empire with him.
He has lost nearly everyone close to him. I would not be surprised that in the third
film, he has his adopted brother killed.
When
placed next to one another, the only real similarity would have to be the
vendettas that the two are trying to showcase.
Vito goes back to kill an old and dying man, and Mike has Roth killed. Roth had orchestrated the attempt on Mike's
life. While the two vendettas are just
that, eye for an eye killing, they only seem to share one similarity. Both murders are against men whose lives are
already on the brink of ending by themselves.
Don Ciccio is so decrepit that he needs Vito to speak directly into his
ear while talking and cannot even see Vito until he is standing right in front
of him. Roth is trying desperately to
jump from one country to another seeking asylum while dealing with a medical
condition that doctors say he will die of in about six months. Both of the vendettas are unwilling to allow
the originator to just die. Even in the
case of Mike and Roth, Mike is advised to just let it go since Roth is no
longer a real threat to the business. So
it could be argued that Mike has Roth killed for the same reason that Vito
kills Ciccio, but that would be forgetting a key component. Vito kills for his dead father, mother, and
brother. Mike kills Roth for attempting
to kill him and possibly his family, with emphasis on the family half. By the end of the film, Mike has next to no
family. How can he justify acting out a
vendetta for people that he no longer cares about? Perhaps that is what the film is trying to
drive home, but it feels like it took much too long to do it.
There
is nothing terribly bad about "The Godfather Part II." It is a good movie to watch, but definitely
requires the first to be seen. There are
a lot of parts that I liked, but the fact remains that it all feels like an
extra film that was not needed. The
first film was all about Mike spiraling down in terms of morality while gaining
the title of Godfather and the power that came with it. Did there need to be a second film that shows
the same thing again, but instead from a later starting point? Did Vito's back-story need to be elaborated
on? I say "No" to both of
these. If the point of the film was to continue
to draw similarities between the two men, it has trouble by taking an even
longer approach than the first film without having those suspense filled scenes
that made the first one so tense. "Part II" has trouble standing on its own and at
times relies too heavily on its predecessor.
Yours in digital,
BeepBoop
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