Everyone makes mistakes, and the Godfather is no exception.
Michael Corleone, known as the "second-generation godfather" of the jianghu people, shouldered the heavy responsibility in the family's critical survival and completed the expansion of the family business with bloody means.
For this, he committed unforgivable sins and paid the price of the breakdown of his family.
He wants to atone for his sins, he wants to make amends, he wants to turn the tide.
It's always been the case, but it never gets what you want.
"The Godfather 3" is his last attempt. He wants Corleone's last name to completely get rid of the gangster label, he wants his children to go the right way, and he wants to win back his own life.
It was also the last attempt of the "godfather behind the scenes" Francis Ford Coppola.
In the '70s, he became famous with two Godfather movies, going from an obscure hairy kid to a big Hollywood director, just like Michael Corleone grew into a godfather.
By the 1980s, Coppola films began to falter, with neither artistic achievement nor box office success. The debt-ridden and helpless Coppola can only pin his last hopes on the golden sign of "The Godfather", and if he fails, his film life may end.
At this point, his goal was no longer to surpass the first two works in the series, and the time and resources given by the capitalist Paramount doomed the upper limit of "The Godfather 3".
In the 90s, all kinds of popcorn blockbusters were piled up, and gangster movies were no longer the darlings of the market. Martin Scorsese's elaborate "Good Guys" cost $25 million and only sold more than $46 million at the box office.
Therefore, the production environment of "Godfather 3" is far less than that of the previous works in the two series, and the direction of creation is therefore completely different.
Coppola has always believed that "The Godfather 2" has told the story of the Corleone family in its entirety, and has refused an offer to shoot a third part by Paramount, I don't know how many times. If he hadn't planted his heels in the '80s, the Godfather wouldn't have had a trilogy.
Maybe God wanted to keep watching, so he waved a big hand and forced Coppola to make a series of final chapters. Coppola was depressed at the time, but he still had a bit of backbone, and directly rejected the script that Paramount had asked others to write.
He had no intention of telling a grand gangster story, like the idea of the CIA and the Corleone family assassinating a Mesoamerican dictator, which was no longer out of date.
He felt that all "The Godfather 3" could do was to express and supplement.
Express the emotions of your own frustration for many years;
Complement Michael Corleone's character arc.
So the film has a clear difference from the previous two series, not so much that it is the worst series, but rather "the series is different".
The first is that the storyline is more simple and clear, and Coppola finally understands how to take care of the audience's feelings after a series of box office failures.
"The Godfather" talks about gangster struggles, power transfers, family education, etc., involving dozens of characters;
"The Godfather 2" is more complex, and on the basis of the internal ghost line and the political line going hand in hand, a large number of flashbacks are also inserted, and the 202 minutes of the film is really not covered.
"The Godfather 3" returns to a neat linear narrative, mainly about only three things:
Michael Corleone wants to complete the whitewashing of the family through religious routes;
and his family conflicts;
Big Brother Sonny's illegitimate son Vincent and Zasa's gang fight.
There are only about 10 main characters that can influence the plot.
Michael's camp, a family of five, plus Vincent six;
Zasa camp, Zasa one;
The "uncle" camp, Altobello, one;
The religious camp, two priests, plus an Italian consortium representing Lucchesi.
The second is the increase in religious drama.
The word "godfather" itself is derived from religion, but it was not until "The Godfather 3", the Vatican, the pope, the priest and other elements were truly integrated into the plot.
The film then went from a critique of American society and politics as a whole to a critique of the collusion between the church and the conglomerate.
But the reasoning is all the same, and there is a sense of wanting to express that the white road is sometimes darker than the black road.
The third is Michael Corleone's emotions and attitudes.
Michael in the first two films is young and promising, and even if he is not so willing to take over the family affairs, he still admits it. No matter what difficulties he encounters, he can face the difficulties, the calm is the restraint, and when it is time to shoot, it is a bloody massacre.
The story of "Godfather 3" takes place 20 years after "Godfather 2", and Michael has been worn out by the years. All he did was not to fight, but to be able to stop fighting.
He did not want to resort to violence and increase his sins.
Coppola injects her emotions into Michael, who all want to get rid of their fate and make up for their past mistakes.
Coppola screwed up his movies, his family was destitute, he had to do something, and making "The Godfather 3" was his redemption.
Michael is in debt to blood, his wife Kay fears him and alienates him, his son Anthony has childhood shadows and is reluctant to inherit his career, and only his daughter Mary and sister Connie are willing to stay with him. He must thoroughly purge his blood debts in order to win back the harmony of the whole family. Taking down the "Standing" group is his salvation.
Unlike Coppola, Michael's faults were forced to be committed, he had no choice at all, and the ruthlessness of fate was more extremely embodied in him.
When he found that the business war was more vicious than the gangster fight, and realized that he still had to use a fierce move, his face was full of anger and helplessness;
When he became diabetic and confessed to the cardinal, his face was smeared with whiteness and grief;
When he begged Kay's forgiveness, his face was filled with earnestness and self-pity.
The Godfather series is essentially a story that belongs to Michael, the story of a good man caught up in sin. Coppola hopes that the film is to express the theme of "evil has evil retribution", rather than gangsters doing charity lectures, killing people without paying for their lives.
Those who commit sins are punished, whether good or bad. Punishing Michael was not law, but fate, and at the time of the massacre order, he did not know that fate had stripped him of the sovereignty of his life for life.
After all, he could not live according to his own wishes, and eventually embarked on a lonely path.
In "The Godfather 3", he is tormented all the time, from opponents, from family, from self.
However, Coppola felt that it was not enough.
He's going to give Michael critical hit damage at the end.
The three parts of the "Godfather" series all start from the group drama and end in the killing of parallel editing, which is very neat and powerful.
Only "The Godfather 3" has a backhand - Michael was punished most directly.
I don't know how many times the mental crit is more painful than the pain of flesh and skin.
From a silent cry to a cry out of the soul, Al Pacino drew a heart-wrenching end to the character.
This is the collapse of a gang boss and the collapse of a father.
Coppola was much luckier than Michael.
"The Godfather 3" eventually won the global box office of $136 million, ranking 16th in the year, and nominated for 7 Oscar awards, Coppola finally won back the trust of the big studios.
It's just that he quit the film industry after "Rainmaker" in 1997, and after taking "Youth Without Youth" in 2007 and grossing more than two million at the box office, he basically did not make much film and was in a semi-retired state.
Even so, the Oscars awarded him the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010.
He had completed Michael's unfinished personal redemption.