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Rating: “I did it because Michael had not yet paid for his sins.” Francis Ford Coppola explained the reason for this (apparently) unnecessary film like this.
Script at ground level and without sparks for over an hour. More than an hour of yawns and regrets for the Coppola of the golden years. Then something great, something that instantly destroys the criminal epic of the first two episodes – that epic which fascinated many and enraged many others – and turns the myth of the honored society into what it is: “the banality of evil.”
“How about confessing?”
“Your eminence, I don't know... It's been thirty years... I would waste too much of your time.”
“I always have time to save a soul.”
“Mine is an irredeemable soul.”
“Don't say that.”
“What's the point of confession if I'm not sorry?”
“They say you are a practical man. What do you have to lose?”
Michael yields. In front of him, there's a good man. A true priest. Something from another time.
The godfather vomits everything: “I killed my mother's flesh...” He cries. He's sincere. And the priest must absolve him. His God-Father has ordered it.
But confession alone is not enough to find peace. Pain is needed. And what greater pain than the death of a child? Faced with such a thing, there are only two choices: blaspheme or endure.
Of the two, the latter. Michael puts himself in the place of the good thief and serenely accepts the crucible that separates gold from earth. After the fire, in front of a splendid wooden crucifix, the stone heart of the godfather shatters into a thousand pieces: “Lord, give me the chance to redeem myself, and I promise I will never sin again.”
If true priests were not only in films, the conversions of criminals would not only be in films.
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