Bucking the conventional wisdom

Rating: 9/10 (16 May 2005)

Series note: It is almost unthinkable to watch this film without having seen The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather, Part II (1974) first. This is a direct continuation of that story.
I suppose that if I do not love being a contrarian, I do not love anything, but it's not that I set out to be contrarian for its own sake. It just happens when I'm honest about my tastes and views. My latest flourish of contrarianism is that I think The Godfather, Part III is just as good as The Godfather, Part II, even though it's a quite different film, loaded with conspicuously different messages. And although most of Part III's scenes, except the extended climax, never quite reach the sublime excellence of much of Part II, Part III doesn't have near the flaws, either. Both films ended up being a 9 out of 10 for me, or a low "A".
Part III is all about Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) seeking redemption and forgiveness. We see him haunted by one of the stronger, more shocking moments from Part II. And so he has decided to sincerely go "legit", while getting back to his roots, trying to regain what he has lost and maybe even "redo" the mistakes he has made. Thus he heads back to New York and eventually back to Sicily. In the opening party scene we see him even trying to make amends with his ex-wife Kay (Diane Keaton). The most important plot points all have to do with Michael learning to compromise and even let go of some control. The most tragic elements of the film are rooted in the things for which he has difficulty relinquishing control, and we feel a much more "real" threat to Michael's safety because of the unintentional losses of control that he experiences.
Of course, the irony ends up being that the "legit" world is just as corrupt, if not more so, as the world he's trying to redeem himself from. Michael is "forced" to resort to his old modus operandi if he wants to participate, survive and succeed. Coppola and co-writer Mario Puzo thus create something of a classical tragedy, with a pessimistic message about human relations; one that also suggests a reinterpretation of the previous two Godfather films as metaphors for socio-economic machinations in general--not just a soap-operatic tale of a powerful Mafia family.
Unlike The Godfather and Part II, Coppola remains tightly focused on his principal themes here. Even though the film seems almost as sprawling as the previous two on first glance, and it suffers slightly from also having a bloated cast, in retrospect, there is nothing present in Part III that isn't meant to be tied in with the subtexts. Even seemingly inconsequential scenes, such as Michael and Kay encountering the marionette show, provide artistic, literary connections to significant plot points. In this case the scene provides both foreshadowing and metaphor for the most substantial element of the climax.
By the way, it's interesting to note that Coppola introduces somewhat erotic (though very tame) scenes for the first time here (that's not to say that past Godfather films didn't suggest romances or sex, but they weren't really erotic). Surprisingly, perhaps, the chief erotic scenes involve his daughter, Sofia, who is shown in a relationship as close to incestuous as possible without being incestuous, and who also has an unpleasant fate in the film. When we also remind ourselves of the filmic treatment that director Dario Argento subjected his daughter, Asia, and his significant other, Daria Nicolodi, to over the years, it might make us want to psychoanalyze Italian filmmakers, but it's helpful to remember that initially, Sofia Coppola's role was to be played by Winona Ryder, who was too sick at the time to begin shooting.
The cast in Part III is sometimes cited as one of the reasons for its inferiority, but despite the relative shortage of megastars, I think the cast, including Sofia, is fantastic here. Godfather newcomer Andy Garcia was particularly impressive.
Coppola again uses Part I for a structural template, just as he did in Part II, but he tries to throw in subtle variations and even red herrings. Like its predecessors, Part III begins with a party celebrating an important familial event related to religious ceremonies wherein we meet the principal players, the middle section deals with similar business dilemmas mixed with betrayals, double crossings and their consequences, and the ending parallels a major shakedown involving multiple parties with some other important familial event imbued with ritual/ceremony (the parallel was slightly different in Part II).
The subtle variations here involve what could be called "tags". For example, the beginning puts us in a more formal religious ceremony before we move to the party, and the ending has a tag that could be one of the most ingenious transitions/scenes that Coppola has written. We move from a profoundly tragic event to a point much later in time. Not one word of dialogue is spoken. Through mere appearance of character and setting, plus the final, sad event, there is as much "said" or implied in one elegant minute as there was in the entire film up to that point--although what preceded was necessary for the pithy implicature.
The technical elements, though good here, cannot quite match those of Parts I and II. This may be more surprising when we realize that the same people worked on both films in many capacities, but it just underscores that elements such as the intense, unusual, deeply lit scenes of Part II, for example, happened as much by a "magic" confluence of events as they happened intentionally, which may be why no one has quite been able to capture that look again, including here. On the other hand, even though the music is excellent in all three films, for my money, it might be best integrated in Part III, especially the melancholy theme that periodically recurs.