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

At first glance, it comes across as a well-made gangster flick. At its heart, it is more than that. “I’ve always felt that The Godfather was less about gangsters, more about power and powerful families, and the hierarchy of power, and the Machiavellian way that real power works in the world,” Coppola told the BBC’s Barry Norman in 1991. It can often be a mistake about their jobs. But in this instance Coppola got it right. Like Hitchcock’s MacGuffin, Rosebud in Citizen Kane, or Hemingway’s Iceberg, crime and violence in the movie, and all “gangster stuff”, are symbolic and spontaneous. They are just hooks. On a deeper level, the film defies its genre, combining several classic themes, such as, a strong father and blood ties, a son longing to escape his destiny, old world values ​​clashing with a changing society, honor and betrayal. , and how power corrupts the souls of those who wield it.

When the first installment of the trilogy hit the big screens in 1972, it changed the way gangster films were made. Before that, simple depictions of gangsters depicted “bad” people in a scene of random murder. For the first time, the world watched a film that adds psychological depth to the workings of the mafia, combining it with what happens within the family, between fathers and sons, brothers and sisters, cousins ​​and friends, and between love interests. It showed that many crimes and political misbehavior can be a reaction to the injustice done by the wrongdoers at different levels and a great lack of love towards them. That no one is born a villain or a criminal; the other becomes

For many, especially those who salivate over politics and withdraw from culture, this may seem provocative, even an act of forgiveness. But for those who are interested in looking at crime and the conflict of power and find its root as the first step to understanding it and, thus, solving it, The Godfather – both the novel and the film trilogy – is a shining example of understanding. the law of cause and effect and its sometimes vicious circles.

One of the reasons for the influence and success of The Godfather is that the author based on his three novels – Mario Puzo – was also deeply involved in the making of these films. He was the screenwriter for all three installments and worked closely with Coppola in developing the screenplay. And he, too, did not see The Godfather as a novel about crime and the mafia. As Nilanjana Roy wrote in her Business Standard column in 2009, “[Puzo] he saw it as a book about family: Business is just business, something you shouldn’t take personally, but betraying family ties, loyalty to family, keeping family values ​​- these are strong and very emphatic themes [the book].”

In India, too, The Godfather is popular and has found an ever-growing audience across generations “in part,” as Roy puts it, “because it’s the story of a big old-fashioned, warm, dysfunctional family.” It is no wonder that Puzo has so many followers in India, where the Corleones, with a few shifts, can so easily become the Kapoors” or, if I may add, the Gandhis, or the great RSS-BJP Sangh Parivar whose members do not share blood ties but belong to classes and beliefs that aim to rule society and organize it in a more conservative and promote its power and influence.

With the rise of so-called strong people around the world, from Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Jair Bolsonaro to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi, and more power is concentrated in a few families, be it politics, business or the film industry, pieces of art like The Godfather, even after decades of its conception, offers a good glimpse into the motivations of the sects that dim the light of democracy everywhere and the failure of the so-called progressive Left-Liberals and their politics often pave the way for such cults to take over… completely.

Singh is a writer from Lucknow