“Michael Corleone”—played by Al Pacino—in the movie series (The Godfather) represents the story of the aborted American dream. He is the son whose father—Don Vito Corleone, the most famous role of Marlon Brando—wanted him to grow up away from the mafia family traditions and their wicked activities, so that he might become a war hero and then enter the world of politics as a member of Congress or a high-ranking politician, potentially assisting the family business from his political status and through his influence. The family’s ambitions for Michael were to keep his hands and reputation clean, untainted by the family’s wrongdoings. However, the tide turns against everyone’s hopes, as Michael does the worst thing a mobster could do: killing a policeman.
Michael's life embodies the tragedy of human beings in the struggle between their personal histories, their social status, their desires, their actions, and then the outcomes, which can be the opposite of everything they sought and dreamed of. Michael’s fate had been decided years before he was born, as he descended from a Sicilian family surrounded on every corner by the mafia. Mobsters killed his grandfather, then his uncle—a child who wanted revenge. His grandmother was killed trying to protect her young son. As for his father, he immigrated to New York as an only child to start his life from scratch, then became involved with the mob until he founded his own mafia family. Michael inherited his father's destiny, along with his status and deeds.
In Michael's first appearance in the movie, he attends his sister's wedding in his military uniform, with medals on his chest, accompanied by his lover, who would later become his wife and the mother of his children—Kay Adams, played by Diane Keaton—who seems wary due to his family's reputation, its Italian roots, and its connection to the mob. Michael—a war hero with a clean reputation—is not interested in trying to sugarcoat his family’s record. He tells Kay stories about his father that include the famous phrase, “I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse,” as if they were bedtime stories for children. Kay seems surprised and perhaps frightened by this conversation about the family business at the movie's beginning, but this transparency later turns into complete denial. The war hero’s comfort in talking about the family’s evil deeds turns into utter rejection from the Godfather—Michael. At the end of the first film of The Godfather trilogy, when she insists on knowing the truth about Michael's killing of his sister's husband, he becomes furious, then says that this is the only time he will allow Kay to ask him about “business.” After she asks him about the incident, he decisively denies—and lies. This is one of the moments in which this new version of Michael appears, the worthy godfather of the family.
The turning point in Michael's life comes with the assassination attempt on his father. Michael then takes revenge on the drug dealer "Sollozzo," nicknamed "The Turk," along with the corrupt policeman who protects him. This is a death sentence for a mobster, as it breaks their ties with their corrupt politicians and policemen. The perpetrator of this crime becomes ostracized by the five major mafia families, and this is what actually happens, as a brutal war breaks out between the families. Michael is now entrenched in the family business; his life is stained with blood and crime, and his political dreams are shattered. He lives a life of alienation and exile, as he departs from New York, leaving his beloved Kay Adams behind with no consolation. His life loses all stability, filled with fear and anticipation. And yet, amid all the horror, Michael lives his final pure and honest moment. It represents everything that Michael Corleone desired and lost: the Sicilian Moment. After all the deadly repercussions in Michael’s life, the Sicilian Moment is like a sweet dream, a poetic, magical fairytale, a story of princesses and melancholy—the handsome American boy from across the ocean whose heart is captured by a beautiful, innocent girl on a remote, distant island.
Michael catches a glimpse of the girl—“Apollonia”—while in Sicily with his personal guards on his way to visit Corleone, his hometown. One of his companions says: “He was struck by lightning.” Michael stands still, and so does Apollonia, as if the lightning struck both of them equally. His companion adds: “Sicilian women are more dangerous than guns,” and they are, as Michael is shot in the heart. They keep walking until they reach a Sicilian man who hosts them at his house. Michael remains silent, still unable to speak since he saw her, while his companions continue their spicy conversations with the old man, who enthusiastically keeps up with them as someone who has known and experienced the charms of women and the beauty of Sicilians. However, the father suddenly rages after they describe the girl they are speaking of. He says: “There is no girl with these features here.” He realizes that his daughter is the one who struck Michael's heart and sparked the spicy conversations of his companions, so he goes angrily to talk to her, to understand the stories of the lightning bolt, the rifle, and the Sicilies.
The noise grows louder in the old man's house. Michael orders one of his companions to call the man. The escorts both carry their rifles. Michael speaks to him calmly, introduces himself, and informs him that this information is confidential and he will lose his life if he divulges it. Then he asks to date and marry his daughter with the family’s consent—a polite and honest request. The old man does not hide his admiration for Michael. He probably didn't even notice the guns surrounding him. The father agrees without hesitation to Michael's offer out of desire, not fear, so the Sicilian trip, or remote island exile, is now filled with roses and hopeful dreams of a happy, comfortable life.
Michael and Apollonia's love story goes on. They have the eyes of lovers, as if Michael is born again, innocent again, not yet stained by blood and revenge. Michael is purified of his guilt and disappointment by love and peace—that peace in the eyes of an innocent and charming woman, the kind of charm, tranquility, and beauty that can attract a man's heart and capture him completely. With all this new fantasy-like life, we still see Michael yearning for his destiny. He waits impatiently for the moment of his return to New York, longing for a family he hasn't heard from, a wounded father whose fate he does not know, a brutal war whose casualties remain unknown, and the ghost of revenge surrounding him.
Michael Corleone does not shy away from his destiny. He was not meant for love, tranquility, peace, and happiness. He is made of hatred and revenge, surrounded by anxiety and sorrow; his eternal destiny is that of loss and pain. Michael's life suddenly explodes. His romantic dreams are shattered by betrayal; an assassination attempt on Michael by blowing up his car in Sicily was planned with the complicity of one of his companions. The car is mined and waits eagerly for its target. It misses his body, but hits his soul forever. Blinded by peace, Michael begins to teach Apollonia to drive. With the excitement of beginnings, Apollonia wants to drive all the time, so she waits for him behind the wheel, using the horn to surprise him that she is the one who will drive the car to their new hiding place after Michael’s life in Sicily becomes threatened due to the murder of his brother, “Sonny.” However, Michael's fate precedes him. The car explodes, missing its target—Michael—but killing everything inside him. That moment remains an incurable scar in Michael's life until his last days.
Perhaps the moment Michael witnessed Apollonia's murder with his own eyes was the moment he came to terms with the inevitability of his fate, the moment in which he knew that his life was one of murder and blood, of mafia wars and vengeance, of assassination plans and schemes to overthrow opponents. After this moment, the explosion creates the version Michael has now become: a fierce godfather who murders indiscriminately. The innocence he felt in Sicily with Apollonia, which he lost due to treachery, will only be revived in the eyes of his daughter, “Mary,” in the third movie of the most famous series in the history of cinema. However, Michael—before his daughter Mary is killed—talks to his son and daughter about that Sicilian moment, the lost paradise. He remembers Apollonia with invisible tears as his son “Antonio” sings a sad Sicilian song. Michael even takes Kay to Sicily to recall those days, and they have a dialogue about longing—his longing for her and his children during his exile. Kay says: “The longing that made you marry Apollonia.” “Not a day goes by that I don't think about you and the children,” Michael replies, and perhaps he's right.
Michael's relationship with death is ironic. Death takes everything away from him except his own life, leaving him in suffering and torture. This monster, who had already lost love and innocence early on, loses what remained of his affection due to the murder of his daughter, Mary, in his arms, assassinated by mistake. He is always the target, yet he is the one who always survives. He lives, however, shattered and deprived of his soul. Perhaps the most famous scream in the history of cinema is living proof of this shattered soul.