‘The Godfather II’ at 50: A glimpse into the psychology of the powerful

At a cursory glance, it comes across as a well-made gangster flick. At its heart, it is much more than that. Coppola told the BBC’s Barry Norman in 1991, “I’ve always felt really less about gangsters than about power and powerful families and the succession of power, and the Machiavellian way that real power works in the world.” Often they can be wrong about their work. But in this instance Coppola got it straight. Like Hitchcock’s MacGuffin, Rosebud in Citizen Kane, or Hemingway’s Iceberg, crime and violence in movies, and all that “gangster stuff” are symbolic and contingent. They are just hooks. At a deeper level, the film defies its genre, incorporating some timeless classic themes, such as a powerful father and blood relation, a son who wants to escape his fate, a changing society, old-world values ​​of honor and betrayal. And how power corrupts the souls of those who wield it.

When the first installment of the trilogy hit the big screen in 1972, it revolutionized the way gangster movies were made. Prior to that, simplistic depictions of gangsters showed “bad” people on random killing sprees. Adding psychological depth to the workings of the Mafia, the film intertwines events within families, between fathers and sons, brothers and sisters, siblings and friends and romantic interests, for the first time the world has seen it. It shows that most crimes and politically incorrect behavior can themselves be a reaction to the injustice done to the perpetrators on various levels and to a deep lack of love in them. that no one is born a fanatic or a criminal; becomes one

To many, especially those who reject political correctness and culture, this may seem provocative, even apologetic. But for those who want to look at crime and power struggles and seek to understand their roots as a first step towards resolving them, The Godfather – both the novel and the movie trilogy – is a shining example of understanding. The law of cause and effect and its sometimes vicious circles.

Another reason for the influence and success of The Godfather is that the author on whose novel the trilogy was based – Mario Puzo – was himself deeply involved in the production of these films. He was the screenwriter on all three installments and collaborated with Coppola to develop the story for the screen. And he also did not see The Godfather as a crime and mafia novel. Nilanjana Roy wrote in her Business Standard column in 2009, “(Pujo) sees it as a book about family: business is just business, which you shouldn’t take personally, but the betrayal of family ties, loyalty to family, preservation of family values— These are the strongest and most compelling themes of (the book).”

In India too, The Godfather is beloved and has found an ever-growing audience across generations, as Roy says, “partly because it’s a classic big, warm and utterly dysfunctional family saga. It’s surprising that Pujo has so many fans in India, where The Corleones, with a few minor changes, could just as easily be the Kapoors” or, if I may add, the Gandhis, or even the larger RSS-BJP Sangh Parivar whose members they may be. It is not a blood relation but a relation of caste and ideals which aims to preserve and nurture their power in a way that subjugates society and organizes it. effect.

With the rise of independent strongmen around the world, from Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Jair Bolsonaro to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi, more and more power is being concentrated in just a handful of families. Be it politics, business or the film industry, pieces of art like The Godfather, even decades after their conception, give an epic glimpse of the inspiration behind it. Cults dimming the light of democracy everywhere and the failure of the so-called progressive left-liberals and their politics that often pave the way for such cults to take over… completely.

Singh is a writer from Lucknow