If not perfect, then as close as a movie can come.

Rating: 10/10 (19 May 2001)

If this movie is not perfect, then it may be as close as a movie can come. The people who made this movie excelled in every facet. The writing, direction, and cinemetography are all superb, and there isn't a bad performance in the film. Coppolla captures the look and feel of New York in the late 1940s, then introduces us to an underworld of his own creation.
The opening scene, the wedding of the daughter of Don Vito Corleone, is the longest wedding scene I've seen in any movie and not a moment is wasted. Virtually every character and plot twist that appears later in the movie is introduced here. When the baker mentions to the Don the Italina POW his daughter wants to marry, we never see the boy, yet he shows up at the hospital later in the movie, just before Michael's introduction to McCluskey.
Marlon Brando's performance in this movie is so strong, his presence and his character so dominate the picture, that for twenty years it never occurred to me that the title character was not Vito but Michael. It was not until I was an adult that I realized that the tragic conflicts in the picture were Michael's and not Vito's. Vito's time and world were fading and it was time for him to leave with it. Michael subordinates his personal dreams of achievement outside of the family to serve the family when it needs him. Once he's drawn into the family concerns, he is trapped. As he takes on the responsibilities of family leadership and grows as a man, his options outside the family diminish and he loses the freedom to be the man he had hoped to become.
One of the things movies give us are the images that stay with us. This movie is full of them: Sonny's beating of Carlo, the mass murder interposed with the baptism at the end, a disconsolate Fredo on the curb, Vito in the garden with his grandson, and of course, the horse's head.

This movie gives you something new each time you watch it. Rent it this weekend.