The Godfather: Part II

In my review of this movie, I think I am again going to come across issues in the process of criticism. The Godfather: Part II is widely accepted as one the greatest films of all time, and yet when I watched it recently (only the second time I’ve ever seen it) I wasn’t impressed. It could be argued that everything in this film is said in the first, insinuated in that film’s brilliance. Al Pacino closes the door on his wife at the end of The Godfather, and by that we understand he is isolating himself from her – in Part II we merely see this played out again over three hours. He has already told her in the first film that the family will be legitimate in a few years. He does nothing but repeat his position in Part II. There is no real storyline for him. Where in the first film he moved from someone distant to the family to becoming head of the family, in the second he does nothing, or nothing new. At its worst, the film feels like a bloated, indulgent morass, un-engaging and portentous. There is a difference between letting an audience figure things out for themselves, and deliberately making it difficult for them. Where the first film pitched it perfectly, this second film goes too far. It feels like we are missing vital dialogue, characters arrive and leave who we don’t know, and we seem to skip randomly between scenes. The trial especially is a sudden, unexplained intrusion. The parallel storyline explaining how Vito Corleone came to America could be seen as another unnecessary extrapolation from the first film. It adds little to our understanding of his character. I had to look up other critics to see if I was alone in my feelings here. I have some support (I will post links to them in the comments), but not much. Of course, this movie is filmed exquisitely, the acting is superb, the dialogue curt and precise. I loved the slow progression of the seasons, the sinister movement of moods reflected in the cinematography, the silence on the lake, and the final brutal moments of the film. What it comes down to is that I didn’t enjoy this movie, and in fact don’t enjoy much of what Coppola has directed. He appears to have difficulty editing down the vast amounts of material that he shoots (see Apocalypse Now), which is a vital element of filmmaking. If you were to change the question and ask ‘is it a great sequel?’, then my answer might change too. This is a different issue which raises new questions, such as what is the purpose of a sequel? It’s not required to be complete or satisfying in itself, and this film certainly isn’t.