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1972, Paramount
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Starring: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro
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In 1972, a movie was released based on Mario Puzo’s novel, The Godfather. Thirty years on, Francis Ford Coppola’s film maintains its position as one of the most popular and critically acclaimed in cinematic history. It won three Oscars: for best picture, best screenplay and best actor (although Marlon Brando refused to accept the award). The Godfather, along with its two sequels, The Godfather Part II (1974) and The Godfather Part III (1990), form the famous trilogy depicting the life of the Corleone family. It has become such a cultural icon that in the 1998 film You’ve Got Mail, Tom Hanks even suggests that the answers to all life’s questions can be found in The Godfather.
A Family within ’the Family’
The Corleones are not just any old family: they are deeply enmeshed in the underworld of organised crime. The Godfather is about Mafia Don, Vito Corleone, and the passing of the ’family business’ to one of his sons, Michael. This is an insightful study of violence, power and corruption, honour and obligation, justice and crime. In the opening scene of the film, the camera pulls back very slowly from the face of a man in Vito Corleone’s office, where he is regally and ruthlessly carrying on his business during his daughter’s wedding reception (being held in the compound of his home). In the low-lit office, Corleone is sitting behind his desk, while he lovingly and gently strokes the head of a cat perched on his lap. Although he moves stiffly, Corleone wields enormous, lethal power as he dispenses his own terrifying form of justice, determining who will be punished and who will be favoured.
The Godfather is also a film about family. It begins at a wedding, and Part I ends at a baptism. Part III ends with the family going to the opera. In between, the action is interspersed with scenes of weddings, funerals, pregnancies, illnesses, family dinners and family feuds.
This is the great paradox of The Godfather: on the one hand, it portrays the common life of a family, while on the other it shows the bizarre, sensational, violent life of ’the family’ (i.e. the Mafia).
Clip One: The Baptism Scene
Michael Corleone, Vito’s son, has agreed to become the godfather to his new nephew. The baptism scene that follows is one of the most memorable in cinematic history. In a beautiful Italian church, Michael and his wife Kay stand holding baby Michael, who is dressed in an ornate Christening gown. As the priest prepares the baby for baptism, he asks Michael a number of questions.
’Do you believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost?’ ’Do you renounce evil?’
’Yes’, he replies to each in turn, without batting an eyelid. There is no hint in his face as to what is happening elsewhere. But as the questions are being asked, we cut one by one to the brutal killing of six men, gunned down in cold blood on the orders of Corleone. The organ reaches its dramatic crescendo in the church as, elsewhere the guns fire and blood is spilled. The priest concludes the service with: ’Go in peace, and may the Lord be with you.’
Religion and Reality
It is never enough simply to mouth Christian platitudes. It is not enough to be baptised, married and buried in the Church. The Christian faith is all about transformed lives. The Godfather presents us with extreme examples of hypocrisy, but these all started in small ways somewhere earlier. It should make us ask whether we are riding along the same tracks of hypocrisy that led, ultimately, to the spectacular examples we see in the film.
The easiest person for you to deceive is yourself. There is always a danger that we separate what we say from what we do, which enables us to pretend to be something or someone we are not. So, mouthing religious platitudes does not guarantee us acceptance by Christ, his approval or a ticket to heaven. You might tell the hospital receptionist, for instance, that your religion is ’C of E’, but have you ever been along to your local church?
I once asked a man why he didn’t go to church, and he replied that he sent his wife along instead ’to keep up the insurance policy’. I pointed out to him the fact that God doesn’t issue joint policies. You need to believe in him for yourself.
Being religious does not in itself guarantee a relationship with God. Instead, friendship with God involves humility and honesty. After all, you don’t become a saint just by putting on Marks & Spencer underwear.
Who’s Pulling Your Strings?
The title scene of the film uses the same image that appears on the original cover of the novel. It depicts an arm reaching downwards, with its hand clasping a wooden crosspiece, to which strings are attached. This symbol points to the theme of both the novel and the film.
In the book, Don Corleone proclaims to the other dons, ’We are all men, who have refused to be fools, who have refused to be puppets dancing on a string, pulled by the men on high.’ But what does control us? Don’t we all, to some degree or other, have strings attached?
Take the past, for example. We can’t seem to escape it, and it affects us all. It is no good pretending otherwise. Then there is the issue of genetics: at a biological level, we are all complex chains of DNA, which seem in some way to determine who we are and who we are to become. Of course, it’s becoming ever easier to blame our behaviour on our genetic make-up. It’s tempting to abdicate responsibility for our actions, suggesting instead that it’s the fault of our genes.
You often hear people blaming their present behaviour on the way their parents have brought them up. ’I had a lousy background,’ they say. ’I only do what I saw my parents doing. It’s too late to change.’
The present also comes with strings attached. In today’s environment of global capitalism and market forces, there is enormous pressure to have everything, and to want more. Peer pressure also affects us. Have you ever done something wrong, only to say, ’My mates made me do it’? Force of habit is another good excuse: ’I have always done it; I can’t get out of it; I can’t break the bonds.’ And, of course, there’s the small matter of fate, destiny, bad luck or even a curse . . .
Freedom from the Ties that Bind
The strings of both the past and the present can only be broken by Jesus Christ. In the Bible, Psalm 129 states that ’the Lord is good; he has cut the cords used by the ungodly to bind me’. Elsewhere, God tells the prophet Hosea: ’I led them [the people of Israel] with cords of human kindness, with ties of love; I lifted the yoke from their neck and bent down to feed them’ (Hosea 11:4).
Can we ever escape our strings? In one sense, no. After all, a puppet without strings is a pile of wood. But we need oversight and guidance, not control.
At the beginning of time, Adam and Eve were tempted to break free from God, and disastrous consequences followed. They put themselves, and us, under the control of someone else, who pulls our strings and makes us dance towards destruction.
God holds the strings to salvation, but he never pulls them for us. He won’t force us into anything. He offers us the free gift of salvation through what Jesus has done on the Cross. But he will never compel us to accept that gift. We must choose of our own free will, and we must express that choice by honestly admitting our need of forgiveness.
Clip Two: Confession in the Garden
In another very powerful scene from the third film, Michael Corleone is speaking to an old priest outside a beautiful church building bordered with flowers. The priest picks a stone from a fountain, and asks Corleone to look at it. He smashes it open, and shows him that even though it’s been in water, the stone is bone dry inside. This, he says, is exactly the same as the people of Europe. They have been surrounded by the Christian faith, and yet Jesus does not live within them.
The priest offers to hear the Michael’s confession.
’But it’s been too long’, argues Corleone. How can he repent after thirty years? He’s convinced that he’s beyond redemption.
The priest urges him to seize the moment: after all, what has Corleone got to lose? So he starts confessing.
He has betrayed his wife, he confesses.
The priest encourages him to continue.
A bell tolls.
He has betrayed himself, too – by killing a man.
’Go on’, says the priest once more.
Corleone hesitates. There is more: he ordered the killing of his own brother.
He then begins to cry.
’Your sins are terrible’, acknowledges the priest.
He speaks words of absolution in Latin, and once again, a bell tolls. This time, it’s louder. Corleone is broken.
We Can All Change
For the past few years, ER has ranked among the most popular television series. In one episode, a white man was brought into the emergency room. The camera revealed a tattoo on his shoulder that read ’KKK’ – standing for Ku Klux Klan. It so happened that a black nurse was standing over the patient. The man looked up into the face of the woman and asked to be seen by a white nurse. His reason for doing so, however, was different from what we might first assume.
The white man explained to the black nurse, ’I didn’t want you to look at the symbols that represent the animosity and hatred of my past. I’m saved now. I am a follower of Jesus Christ.’
The nurse was silent.
The man asked her, ’Do you think a person can truly change?’
She quietly replied, ’Yes, I do.’
It is worth asking three simple questions.
First, do you think a person can truly change? Is it really possible?
Second, do you need to change? Is there a habit that has you in its grip and from which you need to break free? Is there an attitude that you have been carrying that you need to let go of? Is there an activity that you have been involved in, that you need to quit?
Third, if you think people can change, and if you think you need to change, then how are you going to change? What will it take? Can you change by the sheer determination of your will? Can you change by keeping a positive mental attitude? Do you simply need a good example to follow?
What will it take for you to really change?
People can change, and there isn’t a single person who doesn’t need to change in some way. But it will take more than the force of our own will, more than a positive attitude and more than a good example to follow. For us to truly change, we need to recognise the extraordinary act of love that God has demonstrated in the death of his Son. We must see the great lengths that God the Father has gone to in order that we might be reconciled to him and be a part of his family forever.
Mary Ann Bird told of a childhood experience that changed her life forever.
’I grew up knowing I was different and I hated it,’ she said. ’I was
born with a cleft palate, and when I started school, my classmates made it clear to me how I looked. When I was asked, ’What happened to your lip?’ I’d tell them that I had fallen and cut it on a piece of glass. Somehow, it seemed more acceptable to have suffered an accident, than to have been born different.
I was convinced that no one outside my family could love me.
There was however, a teacher in the second grade that we all adored – Mrs Leonard. Annually, we had a hearing test. Mrs Leonard gave the test to everyone in the class, and finally it was my turn. I knew, from past years, that as we stood against the door and covered one ear, the teacher sitting at her desk would whisper something and we would repeat it back. She’d whisper things like, "The sky is blue" or "Do you have new shoes?"
I waited for those words, those seven words that changed my life.
Mrs Leonard said, in her whisper,
"I wish you were my little girl."’
Cords of Heavenly Love
Every one of us has been deformed, ever since our strings were severed from God. But God desires each one of us to be his daughter or his son. His love is sufficient to begin to change our lives. God loves us with a love that will not let us go, even though everyone else may choose to give up on us. This is good news!
However, we also need to ask ourselves how we avoid just turning into fake Christians. After all, that’s not real change. As we said, it’s not enough to go through the motions, or to mouth religious platitudes.
So, first, we need to be inwardly changed by Christ, not just externally conformed to his teaching or to the culture of the church. Then, we need to allow the presence of God, through his Holy Spirit, to work in us and produce good ’fruit’. We need to be honest with ourselves, honest with each other, and we need to be honest with God. The whole process begins by ’repenting’, which means turning away from everything we know is wrong and turning to Jesus.
Nobel’s Legacy
The Nobel Peace Prize is the supreme award given to those who have made an exceptional contribution to improving the world. Other Nobel Prizes are given to those who have made outstanding contributions in the arts and sciences.
Alfred Nobel was a Swedish chemist, who made his fortune by inventing powerful explosives and licensing the formula to governments to make weapons.
One day, Nobel’s brother died, and a newspaper, in error, printed an obituary notice for Alfred, instead of his deceased brother. It ’remembered’ Alfred as the inventor of dynamite: a man who made his fortune by enabling armies to achieve new levels of mass destruction.
Alfred had a unique opportunity to read his own obituary and to see how he would be remembered. He was shocked to think that he would ultimately be recorded in history as a merchant of death and destruction. So, he used his fortune to establish the awards, for accomplishments, which we know today and which contribute to the furtherance of life, not death. Nobel is remembered for his contribution to peace and human achievement – not, as he originally feared, as the man who pedalled death and destruction to the masses.
Nobel had spent much of his life being ’successful’ in the business world, only to realise that he had made a huge mistake. Like Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, he got a glimpse of the future, and he didn’t like what he saw.
If people who know you could write your obituary, what would they write? If you were incredibly honest, how would you write your own? Why don’t you try? It could change the way you see your life – for good.
Will you let Christ hold the strings of your life? Will you let Christ heal your broken threads? Although most of us are nowhere near as bad as Don Corleone and his family, we all engage in little acts of wrongdoing that are the first link in a chain of destruction. All of us feel the need to repent, and many of us struggle with the idea that anyone could forgive us.
The good news is that God, through his son Jesus, is able to forgive everything we have done, no matter how bad. And in doing so, he welcomes us into the ultimate family – the family of God.
