The Godfather (in 250 words or less)

Take the following generalization with a grain of salt (or a slice of garlic!), but every great gangster movie investigates the uneasy space between condemning the amoral gangster lifestyle and exploiting the vicarious fantasy of freedom without ethics. Early iterations of the genre attempted to bridge this paradoxical canyon with easy, late-stage moralizing—Howard Hawks’ Scarface, for example, riddling its protagonist with bullets as a way of saying, “See? It was a cautionary tale all along!” Then we have Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, a quintessential standard that seems, among the pantheon of the genre at that time, more like a radical deconstruction. Al Pacino’s protagonist, Michael Corleone, ends the movie on the giving rather than receiving end of squib-heavy comeuppance, denying viewers the comforting reassurance of unearned finger-wagging. The also brilliant Part Two confirms a narrative/character arc that respects a viewer’s intelligence and moral compass, ending with Pacino sitting alone and expressionless (but alive) after murdering his own brother. Coppola trusts you to see that Michael’s downfall isn’t a shameful death; it’s a shameful life. So take that poster off your dorm room wall, bro! -Matt Denvir