The Godfather Dilemma

25th October 2008

Unless you have been living under a dead unicorn for the last month you will be aware that Empire did their “top 500 BEST EVA films list” for the sixth time in four years, and each film mentioned has its own separate cover, (although to be honest they probably made about ten ones which they deemed most popular and just lied about making the rest.)
Anyway last Monday I found myself traipsing from newsagent to newsagent searching for the perfect Empire cover, I went from the corner shop to corporate stationary superstore trying to get my sweaty mitts on the issue I felt best represented my existence

Anyway I brought the Donnie Darko one, but it was a toss up between that and Some Like It Hot. I settled down to read the list, and found myself unsurprised, unamused and unaroused. Of course The Godfather was number one, and of course Indie and that Ark were in there, and of course they had the “Wildcard” that was Fight Club present, and of course it was all predictable so I wondered why the hell they bothered.

The Godfather’s placing took me back to a conversation I had had the previous year with a friend who exclaimed “and you call yourself a film buff ?” at me upon hearing I had not seen it. This title of “film buff” was one I had not called myself because I am not a wanker, it was one that had been thrust upon me when it occurred that
a)I had a fuck load of DVDs
b) talked about films a lot
c) watched films a lot
d) whenever anyone said “whats that film with the man and the dog and he has a face ?” I could name it and the man’s face.

This is more to do with the fact that I don’t like reality all the time and so films which stray far from this are nice, but also because my brain collects useless information and stores it for such an occasion. I have never seen The Godfather, and I have never seen Brief Encounter, Gone With The Wind or the third Star Wars film, but I still feel superior to people who say Garden State was good and that Sofie Coppola is really talented…. So I somehow think that my opinion is superior to others because I have seen a lot of films, rather then all the “right ones.”

Going through the list I can clearly see that films such as My Little Eye and Stardust and The Ewok Adventures are not in there, but some of my other favourites rightly are, but can I be someone who posts on this site as though they have a righteous opinion if I have not seen one of the greatest films of all kind ?

So my dilemma is this, should I see this film, or even all three of them in some kind of epic wondrous waste of a day, or should I let my petty morals forbid me from seeing it just to satisfy other people ? Also what if I don’t like it ? I didn’t like Mulholland Drive and that’s some kind of masterpiece apparently….. But I could like it as I liked Goodfellas and that’s a gangster film, but I thought Scarface was rubbish….. I think this is the hardest decision I have ever had to make after deciding whether to have whipped cream on my hot chocolate.

I know I should see it, but I have got to the point where I almost know that I would not be going into it in a subjective manner, like when I saw Juno for the first time. I was told how much I would love it by every publication ever about four years before it was released so I judged it harsher and with more contempt then I would have done without prior knowledge of its existence. To be honest I could have seen it instead of correcting the grammar in this, but if someone could just summarize it for me I could then look knowledgeable at all the dinner parties I never go to. Cheers.

p.s. – I have not seen Apocalypse Now either.

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