The Voice of Reason: A V.I.P. Pass to Enlightenment (15 page)
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Authors: Chael Sonnen
To counteract all this negativity, I would like to offer you ten films from roughly the same era as
The Godfather
movies, all of which are much better. Don’t worry, I won’t go all highbrow and mention some movie from Serbia that only nine people (including the director’s parents) have seen. Some of these films you will have heard of and probably seen, but I am not talking about the chopped-up versions they show on TV. Before you get all “up in my grille” about them and start defending your precious
Godfather
, let’s watch them together and then do a little compare and contrast. So go grab a tub of popcorn and curl up in the seat next to Uncle Chael.
Just for the record, we’re not at the movies. We’re at the cinema. That’s what the French call it, and who am I to argue with Truffaut and Bazin? Pipe down, the move is starting. Wait, not just yet. I know we paid $13.50 per ticket, $6 for a coke, and $8 for popcorn, but we have apparently not been fleeced enough yet. We get the privilege of hearing a pitch for more Coke, a Visa card, and a pickup truck. Yep. Commercials in the movie theater. If you’re an old-schooler like Chael P., then you remember the big come-on for cable TV back in the day. Twenty bucks a month and no commercials. Now my cable TV bill is $120 a month, and I get to watch that annoying gecko or those played-out cavemen or that hot, crazy hot, Flo from Progressive, whom I can just imagine stripping off that white jumpsuit and beehive wig so we
Now that you know how Chael gets his groove on, let’s get back to the movies. You ready for this?
CHINATOWNJust an extraordinary piece of work. It’s got everything you could ever want from a film: great acting (yes, before he paid more attention to his eyebrows and his front-row seats at Lakers games, Nicholson could really, really, act), great story, great sets, great lighting, etc. Just watch it. Oh, and the sequel,
The Two Jakes
, is pretty damned good too. Not as good as
Chinatown
, but better than the reviews it got. Nicholson’s Jake Gittes, an idealist pretending to be a cynic, has so much more depth and character than anyone in any
Godfather
film. Watch him; watch a great actor, with a great part, create a great character, in a great story. Enjoy Nicholson’s brilliance. It was all downhill for him after this.
THE EXORCISTA horror film? Well, yes and no. A brilliant cinematic triumph, which used the story of demonic possession as a kind of palimpsest to write questions about faith, life, family, illness, fear, and mortality onto the culture itself. This movie’s cultural and cinematic impact far overshadows that of
The
Godfather
. So much so, it is actually embarrassing to mention them in the same sentence. Friedkin, the director, is a true genius. Seriously, if I were him, I wouldn’t allow either Spielberg or Lucas to wash my car. He recreated cinema with this film. Watch it. Watch a master at work.
LAST TANGO IN PARISYes, that blown-out boring wretch from
The Godfather
, Brando, was a fantastic actor when he didn’t have contempt for the material and actually
tried
. Watch him in this movie, and then watch him as Don Corleone. He’s laughing in his grave right now at the mockery he made of himself as Corleone. He actually appeared as Corleone (unbilled) a final time, in a film called
The Island of Dr. Moreau
. Rent it. You’ll see what I mean. In both films he has the same contempt, the same self-congratulatory, breezy lack of concern or artistic integrity—a man fully at peace with his position above and beyond the material he has been given, comfortable, inoculated, warmly ensconced in the brutal, mercenary notion of his own private, smirking, artistic joke. Then watch him in
Last Tango
. Watch the scene with him sitting next to his wife’s casket. Listen to him, a great actor at the height of his powers, with a great script and a great director (Bertolucci).
LITTLE BIG MANA great film starring Dustin Hoffman, who would have made a much better Michael Corleone.