An examination of the Mafia from the view of the executive suite

Rating: 10/10 (25 February 2017)

The Godfather films (the first two at least) are operatic in their intent and are as sweeping in their view of the human condition as any American film ever made. They are not violent slice-of-life character-driven action films like Goodfellas or "The Sopranos," which are a superb film and an extremely watchable cable series, respectively. The Godfather is, to my mind, superior filmmaking because of its propulsive narrative and iconic characters.
What makes "The Godfather" great is that the characters in it know they are doing evil things, but rationalize it to themselves that "the end justifies the means". Coppola makes the hypocrisy and utterly failed values system pretty clear. A baptism inter-cut with scenes of murder...Vito Corleone is at his daughter's wedding, but sits there planning brutal mob stuff in his office...leave the gun take the cannoli...OK to cheat on your wife but "dont discuss business at the table" and so on.
I had to watch this movie several times before I completely "got" it. The plot alone is very difficult to follow with all of the questions it raises. However it is one of those movies that rewards the viewers with those very questions for us to ponder and with its richness of story and character. The questions are about how people who regard themselves as "good" can do terrible things and justify it to themselves. "The Godfather" posits one of the universal problems in life - what is the nature of evil, and how can we recognize it in all its forms? How can people who do evil things think of themselves as basically "good" , how can they lie to themselves as they do?
Central to all of this is the metamorphosis of Michael Corleone. He starts out as the returned all American WWII soldier with the respectable but outsider (in reference to "The Family") girlfriend, Kay, and by just doing what he thinks he must do to protect his family, one thing leads to another, and he ends up the cynical head of the Corleone crime family, morally miles from where he was when we first meet him.