Exquisite Coppola

Rating: Null/10 (19 September 2005)

It is in Coppola that I think we see the direction and spin Welles put on American cinema in it's most vivid survival. The multi-layering, the richness of texture. What Welles says about his films could go for Coppola's too. When someone called Welles' films 'baroque', he explained that for him when the texture of film becomes too thin, it becomes dead. Coppola must feel this way too. And when the still moments occur in Coppola, and there are many treasurable moments of stillness and reflection, there is still much going on in the frame, much to watch, subtexts and contexts to let wash over you. In other words, stillness, but not emptiness.
I think they are all wrong about Sofia Coppola's part in this. If she had played her character in a higher key, a more "real life" key, she would have been written off as a stridently irritating valley girl. She plays a self-conscious young woman in development somewhere between awkward wall-flower and blossoming social butterfly, and she plays it to a T, I believe. Low key. Why not? I guarantee you, three hours of anything else would have been too much. Her performance may have come out of talks with the director, or it may have been her good-sense intuitive playing. But whichever, I think the word "shrewd" can be applied accurately to the way she acts and is used here.
I prefer this third installment to the second, by the way. The third film achieves and sustains an overwhelming crescendo and haunting coda for the series. Taken as a unit, these 3 films form one of the stunning achievements of the American cinema. 10 stars for each Godfather film, this one no exception.