Years After Discovering The Trilogy : Eclipse

Composure or chaos in crisis? Choose!

Think in your own reality, outside someone else’s story and time. If you’ve ever tried to improve but ended up pulled into something you couldn’t escape, the something that stopped you from growing, you get it, right? "Now I Feel Ya" becomes a necessary realization in that moment. Often, it takes A LOT of slow burning, hardly moving, active energy to really get that. Something with its own Earth under it. This is it. Most expect things that can’t be delivered on their timeline. And when you are on the go, you just want to hear nothing and stay in the present. Some back and forth or more journalling than creation is a pet peeve. Responsive space is different from a reflective space.

I woke up today feeling a kind of disaster like never before. “I want the opposite” and tears started falling slow and soft, as I stood on the edge of waking into this cold, gloomy morning. Was it a dream? Some subconscious creation? All I care is how I felt in those moments before and after I embraced the loss for what it is. Haven’t watched films in forever. One being a trilogy worth discussing.

Mama: “You can never lose your family.”

Michael: “Times are changing.”

One hour passed. I wondered what was going on in Michael’s mind? Was he even intending to legitimize the family or becoming just another non-legitimized figure trying to get out? Temporary, latter is ok. Permanent? Who knows. Machiavellian brilliance, sure. But the reality is, sometimes it works. Sometimes. Or when it doesn’t work, it fails miserably.

It’s 2022.

I still full well remember “We’ll get there, Pop. We’ll get there.” The tightest scene a young person ever saw. And sure, we can laugh and recall “Hey, whataya gonna do, nice college boy……You gotta get up close like this bada‑bing! you blow their brains all over your nice Ivy League suit,” back when he wasn’t yet swallowed by the family business. Correction : An empire.

We’ve probably seen enough of films that either makes us yawn at it or see glorification but let’s stand in between for once. I struggle to find ‘glory’. Gloom and doom will be found easily though. The film doesn’t warrant us to judge if he succeeded or failed. Rewatching the film would be worth it to take another look, independent of our times and minds. It's about seeing everyone – the family, the insiders, the outsiders, the victims, and the enablers. The costs of maintaining power. This film makes you wonder why you haven’t stopped finding her a “hero” and focus on every cast and crew present.

Don Vito Corleone was already in decline when the story begins. Virgil Sollozzo says as much, that the Don isn’t what he used to be and it’s hard to argue with him. Vito is shot in broad daylight. Fredo fumbles his weapon and collapses. Any competent hitman could have finished the job and taken out Fredo too. In that moment, the family looked weak and in its weakest stage. And it isn’t the Don who puts things back together. It’s Michael. With no position in the family business, no experience in violence, he still acts faster and more decisively than anyone else. Sollozzo and McCluskey are gone. These weren’t calculated moves advised by Vito. It was Michael taking charge. That’s part of what hints the transition. Michael seizes the power.

Later, Sonny is murdered in a brutal ambush. Vito, older and more tired, was just done. He no longer has the force he once did in any way. The conversation between them said more than words ever could.

On the other hand, again it’s Michael who takes the lead in planning. Michael becomes the protector of the family in the only way he knows how, i.e. complete elimination of threats. He wipes out the rival heads of the Five Families in one coordinated blow. He’s ruthless (even visually scary) than Vito ever was, but he’s effective. He serves to protect this way. That’s cost of power in a world like such. Think about what happens to a person who tries to carry that much weight, control and power on their own?

His “ruthless” decisions weren’t about “choice” and if it were, it was about surviving with a massive cost attached. Analytical and unreachable. This felt magnified. His mind beyond Sicily probably just “shut” down…given everything that spiraled in his family, the deaths, the betrayals.

"A man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man." 

Beautiful boundary. However, Vito and Michael were fundamentally different. Both endured hardship, but on very different terms. One moved from darkness to light. The other, from light into shadow. A bit about Vito, his life started with tears and trauma. By 9 - 11, young Vito lost his father, brother and mother to Don Ciccio in Sicil. Then he was smuggled to America as an orphan, penniless. In his 20s, Vito took control of his neighborhood, wiped away Fanucci, and by middle age had established the Corleone empire. A much familiar arc.

Thinking about his brother Sonny’s death, marriage, baptism sequence, Fredo’s and Mary’s death, followed by his own lonely death. Right? But these events can’t be understood in isolation. Ask all the good, bad and ugly people around him. They are the consequences of a man caught between the demands of power and the remnants of a personal moral code.

The idea that Michael could have gone legit without addressing the symbolic murders of his brother and father negates psychological burden of enduring the losses and fear of consequences in the broader Sicilian world. With greater power came more dangerous and complex enemies. Expanding into new sectors exposed the family to risks Vito never had to face. No one can ever be fully “prepared” for this. Michael wasn’t prepared for even the basics (in Vito’s world), forget about the newer, more nuanced threats. The threats Michael encountered went way beyond rival mob families. He had to face unstable business alliances, corrupted political systems, backroom deals, corporate boardrooms, and betrayals from insiders. Worse still, he found himself dealing with institutions that were, in many ways, more corrupt and morally compromised than the world he came from. This frustrated a young me. So much is excused in the name of so-called “legitimacy”! These weren’t any cleaner than the mob. Just worse. Wore better suits and pretended extremely well. Far more dangerous, and to be precise, pure evil.

Vito Corleone’s world operated on old-school values, such as respect, loyalty, codes of conduct, and personal relationships. Vito knew how to survive the streets by offering favors to his community. He built power like that. Michael had to deal with the same old threats his father had managed for decades, but also with a new breed of enemies who were more cunning, less bound by old-school values, and more connected to global finance and politics. What used to work no longer guaranteed survival. On top of that, Michael faced betrayal from within his own bloodline. The rot was in the inside and outside world. More erratic and far less stable, Michael had to operate in a time of transition and sustain the rest of it. Power grew, yes. Vulnerability? Absolutely yes. “Times are changing” is the number one truth I’ve come to understand. I disagreed with it for years. A simple question. You might be upright, but have you ever stopped to consider what or who you’re actually dealing with? That changes everything, including you. Even if it is on the outside, not on the inside, this is the hardest part to explain and make it make sense. This is where you become even more vulnerable. Machiavellian things. Also, we don’t need to go “Oh, he revealed himself ?!?!”. It’s not always about intently masking in shady sense.

Michael Corleone served as a decorated U.S. Marine in the Pacific during WW2. He earned prestigious honors from Silver Star, Navy Cross and Purple Heart. Brave and rewarded. More effortlessly calm, composed, and eerily rational even in violence. Far more "contained", instead of being "settled". He was too uncommon, but an ideal mob bass. After the war, he wanted to return to civilian life and return to Dartmouth, all separate from the Corleone business. But once Vito was attacked and Sonny was murdered, everything slowly started to change. Better (Godfather) among the next gen lot, but he was pulled into a crisis already filled with long-standing enemies, grudges, and fragile truces. HE too changed. The words “duty” and “necessity” take a whole other meaning. A solider goes greatest lengths to protect and pursues duty as a necessity.

If he didn’t react at all, letting the family collapse would have meant allowing death, chaos, and stranger control over them. Refusing power meant letting the family collapse or be crushed by others. Walking away was psychologically possible but practically disastrous. Protection. Revenge and legacy follow as he understood it.

Michael wasn’t exactly a "lesser" "Don" than his father. He was much better and took it to another level. Corleone influence wasn’t limited to the traditional spheres anymore. Michael, the “outsider” / “civilian” became an “insider” harder than even Vito had been. That shook just about everyone. It's hard to imagine the older Don moving like this. His move to enter family business was a response to crisis that warranted every ounce of his soul until he died. You might be quarrelling about the “choices” he had. Talk about the “choice” first cause the sequence will follow. A single pull is enough of force to never let you go back. A best example is Mary’s murder at the opera. Michael had already begun to reconcile with his family. He had made peace with Kay, and his relationship with his children was healing. What do we call this? Cycle. Miserable fate.   

The concept of smooth transition of power wasn’t applicable whatsoever. Barzini was already moving against the family. Tessio was ready to betray them. Carlo had already helped orchestrate Sonny’s murder. The idea of a peaceful succession was dead long before Vito was. Michael didn’t inherit a throne. He had to claw it out of a collapsing system.

Once Vito Corleone was gone, Michael stood alone. Tom Hagen, with his classic clarity and steady loyalty, was much needed. A rational consigliere who helped steady Michael and interpret the motives of both family and enemies. Trust and loyalty lived in that relationship more than anywhere else. He understood not just who was present in any situation, but why they were there, what their motives were, how they operated, and what had to be done. One example of this is during Vito’s recovery, when Sonny clashed with Tom and others about Sollozzo. Sonny’s temper and impulsive decisions were already troublesome. Ironically, Sonny found the very drug business that Sollozzo wanted Vito to accept tempting. It was clear what Sonny was capable of. When everyone else left, Vito nudged Sonny to realize that exposing weakness and acting too eager in such matters could be used against them by mentioning his concern for children to focus on the conversation. Fredo was under some serious influence of people who openly disrespected him and intend to use him. In turn, Fredo publicly disrespected Michael, while Tom tried to keep him grounded. Though hurt and pissed, Michael still managed to warn. It was his final line in the sand. No aggression. Ice-cold restraint. Fredo had to realize that taking sides comes at a cost. His reckless sharing of info he had access to did make him a liability as much as Sonny’s hothead.

At Vito’s funeral, Michael and Tom both showed what made them different, efficient and proficient. Both observed, processed, and analyzed everything with absolute awareness. Those wicked smiles knowing that Corleones were done. Both noticed it. His expression at the funeral was an unreadable, controlled way to fathom the depth of treachery. Game starts now. The burden has passed, and there’s no turning back.

Michael succeeded too well. He went “legit”. Yes. But the meaning changed. The world changed. It wasn’t the states. It was Sicily. The tragedy wasn’t that he failed, but that he did exactly what was ideally effective and it destroyed him anyway, but in the worst possible way, just like the world he lived in and his own unpredictable flair. In this world, no one escapes without paying a price. No matter how noble the intention, misdeeds bring consequences.

This is the brilliance of the characters. Every character acted true to their core traits, their roles, their destinies. Michael operated at full capacity within the world full of treachery, evil, and collapsing alliances.

Why did Carlo beat his pregnant wife in The Godfather?

Exactly when? That would be a good question. Since day 1, his intentions weren’t nice. But the day Sonny drove to confront him, it was all part of the setup to get him there. Carlo didn’t give a damn about the unborn child.

Carlo didn’t love Connie. He married her thinking it was a shortcut to power, that by wedding Don Vito’s daughter, he’d be handed a piece of the Corleone empire. Daughter loved the man strong enough that Vito gave in despite not trusting Carlo who wasn’t given any serious part of the business either. Mutually exclusive! Plan failed! This frustrated Carlo, so he took to beating up Connie. The abuse was born out of resentment. He wasn’t going to get anything tangible by abusing her but was stupid enough to take it out on her. Well Carlo, Proximity ≠ inheritance. The last time was when the other families were aware of the threats Sonny made to Carlo. They knew the easiest way to lure Sonny out without paying attention to his own safety was to have Carlo beat up Connie and have Sonny find out. He hit Connie again. She called Sonny, and Sonny took the bait. He already broke the code of discretion and was making public appearances even after Vito was attached. They used his predictability to plan a calculated trap. They ambushed him at the tollbooth.

I wish Connie had known that her husband was part of a cold-blooded setup to eliminate her brother(?) The presence of the (un)born child exists in both brothers’ instances, i.e. when Sonny drove off in a rage to defend his sister and Michael during the baptism scene.

Carlo wanted to get rid of Sonny. The other families, especially Barzini, wanted to get rid of the aggressive heir to Vito’s throne. I hoped Connie remembered the physical abuse she suffered that could have had serious consequences for her unborn child, so to speak. They thought whoever would follow after Sonny would prefer peace over revenge. What the Corleone enemies unleashed was something far more dangerous by thinking they were cutting off the head of the snake. They just… underestimated Michael or didn’t even see him in the picture, so it worked. The safety of being an underdog but the pain in being your very own self.

Carlo’s death vs. Sonny’s death reactions in and out of film weren’t surprising. Sonny was also someone’s family. Whatever doesn’t make sense to a third person was usually fatal in leadership, especially when betrayal comes from within. What Michael did was to not act on impulse but to figure out what exactly happened. I’m not morally indifferent to it. From a character arc POV, it was a symbolic move. Sonny’s death hurt, but Carlo’s execution shook people and perceptions, because it offered a glimpse into who Michael had become and is capable of being.

One of the darkest and most cowardly acts in the story was the setup to kill Sonny. Vito’s grief when he saw his son’s body was pure pain and he consoled Tom, which is not a gesture most would think to make in such a moment.

And how could we forget Fredo? No way. If Fredo wasn’t controlled, someone else will. That had already happened once, and it nearly got Michael, Kay, and their children killed. It wasn’t about being careful around him anymore. Exiling him would have left a target on his back. Killing him was brutal, yes. But, Patience is a gameplay only the Chief player understands and could make sense of. While there’s no guarantee new rivals wouldn’t emerge, it was a statement.

Michael’s transformation was layered, painful and just…ice-cold. Adaptable, efficient and brilliant, not old-school, warm or wise. Had they switched eras, Michael could have thrived in Vito’s time. But I can’t say the same for Vito.

Michael evolved into someone who responds with stillness and precision. Still not robotic, but ice – cold y’know? His emotional language turned inward. It was simmering on the inside. Everything from the orchestra to the lighting, worked in harmony to express the texture of that internal world as opposed to glorifying in any which way. Shed light on it but that’s all. This would’ve have been possible without soundtrack, characters, artists, and a vision thoroughly attuned to what power, treachery, trauma, and legacy really feel like. The lighting is deliberate enough to explain what words can’t. What a deep, low-key lighting to cast characters into and out of darkness, representing hidden agendas, conscience ambiguity, and internal tussle, especially using Rembrandt-style lighting!

The Godfather cast is iconic for a reason, and that fact alone hurts. Marlon Brando isn’t alive. John Cazale isn’t alive. Morgana King isn’t alive. James Caan isn’t alive. Yes, time is said to age us like fine wine. We say “aged like fine wine” but the wine turns bitter once you realize every sip is one less from the can. The pain is inimitable.

Most probably haven’t seen any of the trilogy and I was one of them until I wasn’t. I picked up the book and often looked back.

Finding something relatable in this masterpiece isn’t unusual. To find ourselves reflected here is hardly surprising. Each character, every facet of this magnum opus, is a significant part of a whole we should cherish. Masterpieces can be relatable. Again, we’ve all seen too many films and you may have seen many more than I ever did. All doom and gloom. This trilogy though, while having all the doom and gloom in the world, manages to spark a thought process. Subtle, nuanced and very, very fragile.

P.S. This has been on my mind for a while. Before it’s too late, we can do something. I truly admire the old-school style of gratitude. Anything we can look back on than a gesture that vanishes in the feed. But if they don’t use social media, how do we send those without going digital? Just something to think about. Analog and digital for the win ;)