THE GODFATHER

dMYD DVD

Starring Marlon Brando

Trailer

Y

Great expectations. It’s not the masterpiece, not really; it’s overlong, Pacino’s journey from conscience to demon is simplistic, it’s essentially a series of killings interspersed with domestic issues… But then again… the acting’s incredible across the board, so believable and affecting that you want to reach out and comfort Robert Duvall as he facilitates death, pat James Caan on the head when he beats his brother in law to liquid or tut quietly as Al has a man shot in the eye. As an exercise in humanizing evil it’s largely faultless, at the time it was written a stark and fresh example of the coldness we feel every day when emphasizing with something we should despise. But, whoops, since then culture’s popped out The Sopranos, and The Godfather took a flying leap. It’s not the movie’s fault, but the whole thing feels like a taster course for the issues that David Chase’s uberwork would later examine in pin-point genius, with the luxury of six series and a big fat cable budget. There’s a joke about the show being the new Godfather there somewhere, but it’d be an insult to both pieces to make it. Just whip out Coppola’s proto-epic if you only fancy wallowing in the hell of the Italian-American experience for one hundred and seventy five minutes rather than three thousand, eight hundred and seventy. Oh yeah, and Sopranos is funnier.

… And then there’s Brando. Presumably because he fucked or ate anyone who disagreed with him, he’s once again allowed to stomp all over the movie with a Godzilla performance so unhinged that you half expect him to stare at the camera for the whole run time whilst beating Pacino with his own gnawed off leg. The accent, cadence and timing are now so ingrained in pop culture that its impossible to forget them, but think for a second how lilting, bizarre and out of place everything he says and does is and then swallow your brain entirely when you realize that it completely works. It’s a mark of the sheer willpower and genius-level balls that Brando could bring to a film when he could be bothered, no better showcased than in the hazy, sun-blessed beauty of the tomato garden scene. A lumbering, orange-grinned giant of enjoyment for his adoring, perplexed grandson, Corleone here stands as a microcosm of Brando’s life; frightening, funny, inspiring, wonderful. The Godfather may be bettered, but few are ever going to come close to the fat-fuck genius of Mighty-Man-Marlon.