A significant part of your father’s view on life has been shaped by books and movies. One of the things I look forward to is reading and watching the classics together and guiding you through the process of discovering truth. There is something satisfying about digesting the thoughts of a writer or filmmaker who lived in an entirely different time and context, yet you are able to connect to their ideas in a manner that speaks powerfully in your own life. And it’s even more fun when you are able to do this with others who are traveling a similar road.
One film that we will probably view together multiple times is the Godfather Trilogy- a film about the rise and fall of the Corleone organized crime family. The first part of the series was made even before your father was born, and it was widely considered to be the best film of its era. Nearly 40 years and two sequels later, it [the entire trilogy] is now widely considered the best film of all time, and that will still probably be the case 40 years from now when hopefully you’ll be sitting with your own children watching this epic drama. There is so much to discuss, we can’t possibly get through all of it in one sitting. But here are a few things that resonate most with who I am and how I view the world.
One of the attributes of all good drama is the presentation of man as neither all good or evil but rather inherently flawed with the possibility of redemption. The most compelling characters of the film have a myriad of shortcomings- not the least of which is that for the majority of the trilogy, they use violence, deception, and murder to achieve their business objectives. To be clear, your father doesn’t condone any of this! However, there is something about their story that drew me in- perhaps because I saw myself in their narrative, or because some deeper truth about the nature of reality was revealed through their broken lives.
The family’s journey starts in the town of Corleone, Sicily with the birth of Vito Andolini in 1891. Vito is a seemingly ordinary boy who is thrust into a difficult situation by circumstances beyond his control. His father Antonio and older brother Paolo are killed by the local warlord because they refuse to genuflect to him. Vito’s mother goes to the warlord and begs for Vito’s life to be spared, but the warlord refuses, and Vito’s mother is martyred while giving Vito a chance to escape. He ends up being secretly transported out of Sicily by donkey, and finds himself on a cargo ship traveling across the Atlantic and heading to America. He arrives in New York as a young boy with no possessions and unable to speak the language. In some sense- all great stories start this way. No one is born extraordinary- but it is instead how we deal with the difficulties that life presents to us that will determine whether or not we unleash the extraordinary potential that exists within all of us. No doubt there will come a point in your life where some external factors will force you to leave what is familiar/comfortable and you may find yourself in what seems like a foreign land without the wherewithal to make it. I encourage you to embrace this challenge and not shy away from it. Though it is undoubtedly a difficult and uncomfortable place to be, it is also when you know you are at the beginning of your own version of the Hero’s Journey.
Later in on the film, we see Vito as a young man in the little Italy section of New York City working in a grocery store. It is not a particularly glamorous position, but it’s clear he is someone who does what is asked of him faithfully. One day, the local mafia chief comes into the grocery store with his nephew and speaks with the grocery store owner (Vito’s Employer). The chief suggests that the grocery store owner give a job to his nephew, and the grocery store owner who receives protection at the hand of this man is forced to accede to these demands. Vito sees the conversation that’s just occurred and he knows what’s coming when the store owner approaches him. The employer explains that he must hire the warlord’s nephew, and that means that there is no longer a position for Vito. In what ensues is a wonderful display of Vito’s character and disposition. His job has been unfairly taken away from him- by a combination of hubris/nepotism on the part of the mafia chief and cowardice on the part of his employer. However, Vito does not lash out- he instead expresses his gratitude for what has already been given to him, and indicates that what he will remember most is the kindness of his employer and not the unceremonious manner in which he was relieved of his duties. Many wise men believe that having this kind of attitude is one of the keys to happiness. Your father is doing his best to live with a similar lense on life, but when he falls short as he often does, he reminds himself of the virtue that was encapsulated in this brief sequence.
Finally, there is much debate regarding what the film is really all about. The common view is that the film gave the gangster’s perspective of the Mafia as a necessary response to a corrupt society. The Mafia represents an alternative to the state as the entity that establishes both society’s rules and its enforcement. And the Mafia as represented in the Corleone family has a long list of virtues to go along with their more obvious shortcomings. There are many interpretations- all of which are valid. But I think I find this film so compelling because the Corleone family’s desires are really the desires of ever man. While the family business through most of their history operated in the realm of vices like liquor, prostitution, and gambling, the goal was always for the family business to become a force to be reckoned with in the legitimate world. In the third installment of the trilogy, Vito’s son Michael sells the Corleone family interests in all the seedy businesses in an attempt to purchase a controlling interest in a real estate enterprise called International Immobiliare. While his attempts ultimately fail, I viewed the family’s struggle to emerge from the underworld into the business world’s primary stage as a metaphor for every man’s desire to be recognized and respected by his peers. In some sense, the fact that they failed is the film’s way of saying that our attempts to achieve this kind of recognition and legitimacy from our fellow man is futile, and that the one and only source that could imbue the kind of meaning and purpose in our life comes from Above.
There’s so much more to say, but perhaps it’s best at this point to just wait and see what you take away in your first viewing. I’ve scheduled your first viewing to be on your 15th birthday, which was around the time I first saw it. We’ll watch it together, because in the immortal words of Don Corleone
“A man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man”
