Day 12: January 14th, 2014: The Godfather Part II (1974) - Francis Ford Coppola

Well this happened. The only sequel on my list, The Godfather Part II, is #3 on the IMDb Top 250 and #32 on AFI’s list. That makes it a pretty big deal. But I should go ahead and say that I feel a little tricked. The Godfather Part II is a sequel in that it is a movie that was released chronologically after a previous movie (just 2 years after The Godfather). But The Godfather Part II does not only follow the Corleone family after the events of the first film, but also the generation before the first film. It is a prequel and a sequel… wrapped into one…

Sorry to use a Jersey Shore gif, but this properly expresses my bitterness for watching a film that could literally be two separate films. Like in the way The Little Mermaid had a sequel, called the Little Mermaid II: Return To The Sea, that followed Ariel’s daughter, and then another sequel, The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Beginning, which is actually a prequel. Imagine taking those two movies and intertwining the scenes from both films to make just one film.

That movie would be 48 minutes shorter than The Godfather Part II.

For some reason I think reality TV stars just get me right now. Anyway. I’m not denying that the film is great. It is really a cool gangster film that also is directed and filmed very artistically, to the point where you feel entranced in the world of the Corleone’s, almost like you’re a real spectator in their crazy and dangerous lifestyle. Michael Corleone, still played by Al Pacino, is insufferable in how far he has sunken into the role of the Don in his family. His heartache is the audience’s heartache, the betrayals, the drama, it’s all right there courtesy of the great Francis Ford Coppola.

Not to mention Robert De Niro plays a young Vito Corleone (Michael Corleone’s father, played by Marlon Brando in the first film). He has a tragic and badass backstory. Being just an orphan brought to America as a child, he has to claw and scratch his way all the way up through the corrupt system of hierarchy in poor Italian American neighborhoods.

And his death-stare game is unmatched by any other actor of his time.

The Corleone’s go through a lot, and I guess the prequel plot-line helps the audience understand why Michael is so frustratingly fixed on keeping his family’s power, because we see how hard Vito worked to get it. So yeah. Maybe sometimes the movie feels like this:

But obviously I’m aware that it’s a masterpiece and it’s very obvious most of the time you’re watching why that’s true. The film is also the only sequel to a Best Picture winner to also win Best Picture. (The only other sequel to ever win Best Picture is The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, but neither of the LOTR films before it won). The film won a total of 6 Oscars, with the only acting one going to Robert De Niro.

Sidenote: The Godfather Part II contains one of the few film performances of the great acting teacher Lee Strasberg, who cofounded the Group Theatre of the 1930s and is considered the father of method acting in America. He plays a frenemy of Michael Corleone’s, Hyman Roth.

Day 4: January 6th, 2014: The Godfather (1972) - Francis Ford Coppola

Okay. This one I was a little bit nervous about because I made watching The Godfather for the first time ever into a bit of a molehill… I mean mountain. But I can’t be blamed. It’s #2 on the IMDb Top 250 AND #2 on AFI’s Best Films list. Throw in 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and suddenly I’m terrified it’s gonna blow my brains out with cinematic magic.

But I had seen gangster films before. Goodfellas (1990), Scarface (1932), Miller’s Crossing (1990), many gangster films follow the same tropes that sometimes to me feel a little “You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.” - Singin’ In The Rain

But I guess one thing The Godfather has done to set itself apart from the rest is that it has left a lasting impression on pop culture in almost every form of media. For example, Vito Corleone, a wealthy Italian American gangster who is the Don of his family, is introduced in the opening scene on his daughter’s wedding day. All day he listens to requests from members of the family, and without having ever seen the movie, I recognized almost every line.

                But now you come to me and say Don
  Corleone, you must give me justice.
  And you don't ask in respect or
  friendship.  And you don't think to
  call me Godfather; instead you come
  to my house on the day my daughter
  is to be married and you ask me to
  do murder...for money.

One character randomly mentions that no Sicilian man can refuse a request made to him on his daughter’s wedding day. Who knew? But the long opening scene does a good job setting the stage: 1945, New York. The Five Families, the name of the five leading Italian American families that run the city with corruption and greed, are on the verge of war. Vito Corleone, played by Marlon Brando, is the most powerful, with politicians, police officers, lawyers, and judges in his pockets. 

Marlon Brando is acting talent incarnate. With a career spanning several decades, he was at the forefront of introducing the Stanislavsky method of acting, which he learned from Stella Adler, to the big screen. But unfortunately, this film finds him at the ripe old age of 48.

A real shame.

They sure do.

Anyway. So Vito Corleone is getting old, and as the war between the five families gets more intense, Vito’s youngest son, a war hero named Michael, played by Al Pacino, gets dragged into the family business.

The depth to the story is watching this poor boy who wanted nothing more than to distance himself from the corruption of his family, but he finds himself getting nothing but sucked deeper into the drama.

His Diane Keaton girlfriend finds herself at a crossroads too as she realizes the person her boyfriend is becoming.

Which to me is all very interesting considering the role Italian-Americans played in 20th century American history. As family is weighted so heavily in the culture (and in the film), you can really see how an entire culture of impoverished immigrants did anything they could to secure their place in the new world. Not that I’m condoning the gangsters of the 20th century and their behavior. It’s just very interesting, and makes great entertainment. 

Also fun tidbit. Marlon Brando and Al Pacino both boycotted the 1973 Academy Awards, for which The Godfather received 3 honors after being nominated for 10 (It won Best Picture). Marlon Brando won for Best Actor, but he instead had Native American Rights Activist Sacheen Littlefeather accept it and make a statement about the unjust depiction of Native Americans in film.

Pacino on the other hand, who was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Lead Actor in a Drama, boycotted the Academy Awards because he was placed in the Best Supporting Actor category, and he had more screen time than his co-star Brando. He lost that too.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) - Michel Gondry

I think the classic or critically acclaimed films that I haven’t seen fall into two categories. There are the ones that I basically know everything about, like Fight Club and The Godfather. Then there are the ones that I have heard of, that I know are important because they’ve won Oscars or do very well critically, but I have no image in my mind of what they actually are. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind falls somewhere closer to the latter. I knew Jim Carrey was in it, and that it wasn’t actually a comedy like his other movies, and that was about it. That’s definitely a nice way to watch IMDb Top 250 #80.

The film opens on Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) spontaneously skipping work and jumping on the Long Island Rail Road to Montauk, New York. It’s somewhere in the middle of winter, and the train is empty except for a blue haired girl, to whom Joel immediately finds himself attracted. Kate Winslet (Titanic, Contagion) plays this “colorful” character, Clementine, a girl that has more life in her pinky than Joel’s entire body. She exudes feeling, she is the free-spirited mythical creature that Joel has waited his whole life to meet. And then things go wrong.

The two go through an entire roller coaster of a relationship, finally ending it when they decide they can’t possibly be compatible as lovers and friends. Clementine’s erratic moods and sense of life are a burden for the static Joel, just as his boring stability weighs down her free spirit, so they end it. But then when Joel eventually sees Clementine again at a bookstore, he finds out something strange. She has no memory of him. Her forgetfulness is so genuine that it comes off as startling to the viewer at first. Joel, distraught by this discovery, goes to all of his friends, and they claim not to know who she is.

Joel eventually finds out from his friend that Clementine underwent an experimental treatment to have Joel completely erased from her memory. A man named Dr. Mierzwiak started this treatment as a way of erasing people’s memories of specific events or past lovers, hoping to create a happier past for us to look back on. Joel mulls over this new situation, and then goes to doctor saying that he wants the treatment for himself. That is, after he storms the office and demands to learn about the treatment and why Clemetine got it. Kirsten Dunst (Jumanji, Spiderman), plays the doctor’s receptionist, while Mark Ruffalo (The Avengers, 13 Going on 30), and Elijah Wood (Lord of the Rings) play the doctor’s assistants. They were all great in it.

The next chapter of the movie focuses on Joel undergoing the treatment, which takes one night of Mark Ruffalo’s character systematically going through Joel’s brain (using some bizarre looking brainwashing machines) and erasing any memories he has of Clementine. As the film jumps from outside Joel’s mind to inside it, we see Joel reliving experiences from his relationship. The story leaves the real world and becomes a confusing mess of Joel going in and out of memories, as if the film wishes the show us how scattered memories of the past are intertwined in a web of emotions and people. But as Joel relives both the happy and painful memories, he realizes that he actually wants to remember his experience with Clementine, even if it means he can’t be with her. So the memory version of Clementine and the present version of Joel try desperately to hang on to each other in a very complicated scene that is both thrilling and emotional.

I’m not going to give away the ending, because it’s just too moving and I’m going to say right now that I loved it. While the movie has it’s slow and exhausting points, the story wrapped so beautifully that I wanted to run out and tell everyone that this magical movie existed. Kirsten’s character becomes pivotal, as she struggles with the classic cliché, to love and have lost or to never have loved at all (don’t worry they don’t actually say this in the film). Joel and Clementine go in and out of understanding the importance of keeping memories of all of your experiences, both the good and the bad.

But the two of them are so fun to watch on screen together and I was amazed that Jim could handle himself in such a dramatic role. As someone who takes this film’s messages very seriously, I was a wreck by the end. I couldn’t handle these characters who found love, lost it, and were looking to figure out whether it mattered if they kept those memories or not. The film gets it’s title from the Alexander Pope poem, which the film quotes:

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign’d;

I couldn’t even. Watch it for yourself.