Any cinephile worth their salt knows of Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece The Godfather (1972) and its sequel, The Godfather Part II (1974). Both are often heralded as the greatest films to be shown on the silver screen; both achieving Best Picture at their respective Academy Awards and the former earning the silver slot on the American Film Institute ranked list of greatest films. Beloved by so many, they were an easy target for Greta Gerwig’s billion-dollar box office behemoth Barbie (2023) to playfully poke fun at. It also means that any filmmaker who so happens to find themselves caught in the giant shadow that these gangster epics cast, find themselves with a difficult task. Whether that is imitating The Godfather as pastiche or in the case of Sofia Coppola, Francis Ford’s own progeny, who followed in her father’s filmmaking footsteps.
One of the main themes dealt with in The Godfather Part II was patrilineal legacy, predominantly focusing on the relationship between father and son, Vito Corleone and Michael Corleone. The film flashes back in time, following a young Robert DeNiro as Vito with Al Pacino in the future timeline as his son, Michael, who takes over the crime family, claiming the title of ‘don’. This theme of following familial lineage works in tandem with the life of Sofia Coppola, who has become a revered filmmaker in her own right. Similar to how Pacino’s Michael Corleone is indoctrinated into running the family business from a young age, filmmaking was imbued into Coppola from birth, having acted in her first movie –The Godfather – at only a few weeks old. Between her documentarian mother and the time spent on her father’s film sets, the Cambodian jungles of Apocalypse Now (1979) and the New York streets of The Godfather Part III, Sofia couldn’t help but be curious about directing, going on to direct critically acclaimed films such as romantic comedy Lost In Translation (2003) and, most recently, the Priscilla Presley biopic Priscilla (2023).
Fathers and daughters are a theme that Sofia has used within her work often, using her own relationship with her father for Somewhere (2010) and On the Rocks (2020). She navigates this theme in The Virgin Suicides (1999), and even in Priscilla, as she explores the relationship between Elvis and his wife Priscilla. The latter whose life transforms from impressionable teen to subservient wife to ultimately shrinking away that dynamic for a sense of freedom; a child shedding patriarchal impact. But while Sofia’s filmography sometimes mirrors that of her own relationship with her father, her films are wholly different to her father’s. They are antithetic to her father’s more unflinching work, usually buoyed by an idiosyncratic, pop-infused soundtrack like that of Marie Antoinette (2006) and have a meditative state of melancholy and unwavering, fashionable sense of cool, of which Francis’ films rarely achieved. It has helped signify the distance between herself and her patronage, giving Sofia her own unique voice.
Like Michael Corleone, who finds himself shaking away the tendrils of Vito’s impact as the paterfamilias, Sofia has done the same with her father Francis. While The Godfather Part II will stay in the public zeitgeist as one of the greatest films of all time, Sofia parallels the journey Michael Corleone goes on. They both reclaim their autonomy as their own people, embracing and rejecting fragments of their heritage. In doing so, they both become a tremendous, powerful voice. Whether that be in Corleone’s criminal underworld or in the follies of Hollywood, Michael and Sofia have both escaped the long, encompassing shadow that The Godfather, that of Vito or allegorically Francis, has cast.
Connor Lightbody
Film critic and programmer
