Moral education?

Rating: Null/10 (20 August 2002)

It's sad that so many reviewers judge the "Godfather"-movies according to the moral value of their characters: these are bad people and therefore it is a bad film, unless you show them as monsters. This is simply a wrong and a rather primitive approach. It is as wrong as saying that the paintings of Renoir are better than those of Rubens because Rubens' women are naked and just don't care about it. We don't need moral education by film directors. What filmmakers can give us is examples of what life (and death) can be. Only bad artists (like almost every Hollywood director) judge their characters. Coppola does not.
Michael, on the surface, is more cold and remorseless than Vito. But he has no choice, because he is also under a much higher pressure than Vito. His face has a pasty skin, almost yellow. The constant worrying about his family and business makes him look sick and exhausted. He is a man on the peak of his power (on the peak of the whole family history), but it is eating him up. That is why I saw him not only as a frightening but also as a pitiable man. Take the scene when he comes home from Cuba, sitting on the sofa and refreshing his eyes with a wet towel while hearing his wife has "lost" their child. Or when he watches Kay sewing and refuses to go kiss her. His loneliness is overwhelming.
But is Vito really a more warm-hearted, more "social" person than Micheal? E.g., young Vito lies without hesitation to his pals (Genco, Clemenza), if he can derive an advantage from it. His generous favors for his neighbors have the only purpose of building up a network of dependants. Typical for Vito (standing for the mob in general) is to use "friendship" for business, because to him the main things in friendship are obligation and debt - and not goodness and leniency. These are reserved for the family only. In this, Michael is his pupil, who merely expands these principles from neighbourly help into dimensions "bigger than US Steel". There is one single thing that Vito would not have done, as Michael knows: kill his brother ("Mrs. Corleone: But you can never lose your family - Michael: Times are changing."). And this is the only time he is in doubt what to do.
But Michael *is* a complete different man. He reflects about his life and position in a way Vito never would have done. Vito acts by instinct, like a predator, while Michael is a modern manager, adopting elements of the culture of his homeland, with a WASP wife, army service and so on. Michael has *decided* to become a mobster, for the sake of his family, and is it with great effort and unprecedented success, while for Vito it is simply in his nature. That this permanent strain is far more wearing, sickening, seems to be clear. Therefore the change in Michael's character from Part II to III is not plausible to me. At least it should have been made more clearly *how* he became so gentle and well-balanced.
In German literature you can find a story very similar to this: in the novel "Buddenbrooks" by Thomas Mann, which has nothing to do with crime...