Passed a certain point in popularity, a movie is not just a movie anymore. THE GODFATHER is a good example on how a movie's manifest destiny is to become a cultural anchor, a symbol so strong and timeless, it makes your movie and everyone who participated to it, a point of reference for quality and whatever is the cultural point you're arguing. I do not know whether it's author Mario Puzo or director Francis Ford Coppola that's responsible for making THE GODFATHER what it has become. All I know is that it's a very important movie of the twentieth century, because it makes boundless young boys and alienated middle-aged men alike dream of another world. A world where you have to abide by no rules but those you create and where you look out for your own and your own look out for you. THE GODFATHER is much, much more than a simple movie.
I'm not sure how much of the storyline is based on reality. If you don't know what THE GODFATHER is about, I cannot help you outside of giving you this quick rundown. The New York mob's alpha dog Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) is shot like a dog in the middle of the street after being betrayed by one of his soldiers. He is not dead, but the Corleone family, the most powerful in New York, is considerably weakened and the four other crime families are doing all in their power to make them fall. It's the unlikely son Michael (Al Pacino), that takes leadership in the family's hour of need. The difficult and free-thinking son felt his calling when it was of the utmost importance and boy, is he good as his job or what?
Sitting through multiple viewings of THE GODFATHER is a good way to give it life again, to appreciate it for what it is, a movie. To become what is has beome, it's been at first a damn good movie. Every scene is lengthy, well-engineered and directly feeds into the next. The reason of being of every scenes (except for the boisterous, fascinating and layered wedding opening), is often hidden in the preceding scene, which gives THE GODFATHER an increasing sense of purpose as it goes along, like it's gathering momentum. It's a storytelling lesson in itself. One of my favorite details is when Michael and the baker Enzo are standing on the porch of the hospital, dead-eyeing unidentified goons and daring them to enter the hospital where Don Vito is being kept. Michael notices Enzo is shaking like a leaf and not him. It's a very telling detail of what will become. While it's not a visual feast, THE GODFATHER is a lesson in storytelling.
Scenes like that are vital to the transcendent reputation of THE GODFATHER.
Here's the kicker. THE GODFATHER didn't become a cultural beacon by being a good, competently built movie. No, it gained immortality by being MEANINGFUL. In the world the members of the Corleone family created, they have found the cure to existential loneliness. By deciding to care only for a select few individuals who you know will care back for you, they let go of their individual fears and gain a tremendous strength. It's a very seducing, empowering film to watch, because the Corelones (and especially Michael) are rational, reasonable people. They understand the importance and the power of the irreductible group. It's just realistic enough to make the most poetic-minded young men dream they can live in self-righteous autarky like the Corleones.
Because the Corleone are very moral people. They are moral to a point I can conceive a person with a wavering sense of morality will start questioning his ways. Vito, Michael and Sonny (James Caan) right the wrongs, don't let injustice unpunished and proudly hold fort as an anomaly of a system that don't care about them, like a barbarian tribe on the outskirts of the Roman empire. It's a seducing way to think you can live, because in THE GODFATHER's universe, it works. The problem that renders the Corleone way of life impossible is that not only it is obsolete, but it is desired mostly by self-righteous males who desire the power Michael wields and the gusto with which he manages, without seeing the selflessness of this process. THE GODFATHER is realistic enough to make it seem possible, but it's not realistic enough to show you how.
So THE GODFATHER is bound to remain a transcendent male fantasy of an original rise to power that didn't require the beheading of a king. I'm fine with that. I like it better than feudal gangsterism in an era of well-marketed alienation. More than anything, it remains a fascinating work of art that chronicles the lives of very special men. Men of exception who decided to stand out, whatever the price tag would be. These men exist in our society, in our day and age. They are nothng like Michael Corleone and his brothers, yet they are there and they refuse to be fools, dancing on the strings, held by all the big shots. Being a gangster isn't romantic, yet the gangster figure has the potential to create the best romantic stories. I guess that's why THE GODFATHER is bound to be what it is : an immortal object of fascination.