The Godfather | Teen Ink

The Godfather

February 20, 2014
By jmanbailey BRONZE, Littleton, Colorado
jmanbailey BRONZE, Littleton, Colorado
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

When you think of The Godfather what do you think of? I think of a movie about a mob family who struggles with fighting amongst themselves as well as with other significant mobster families in New York and New Jersey. But isn’t this what most people think of when they think of this movie? For me, this was just an initial thought going into the film. After watching it though, I saw an underlying theme of the loss of innocence. Michael, one of the main characters, goes through this change the most out of any character. He is a man who grows up surrounded by the mob and all the issues that comes with it. He grows up making all the right choices and he became an American war hero. But when he is faced with the attempted assassination of his father he does anything he can to protect him and ultimately commits the murder of two people, causing him to take a turn for the worse and become the Don Corleone: the head of the family. He goes from an innocent war hero to someone who is willing to commit mass murder to get his way. In my opinion this film can easily be translated to high school. I’m not saying that high schoolers do or should commit murder. What I am saying is that the theme of loss of innocence clearly translates to the high school scene. Fourteenth and Fifteenth year old teenagers go into high school with no reputation good or bad, they start out with a sense of innocence (a clean slate). Then going through the years you experience things good and bad which causes you to either gain or lose that innocence and most teens lose it, they get involved with things like crime, drugs, sex, and alcohol that influence them to make bad decisions, these decisions get worse and worse as time goes on and they go out of high school at seventeen or eighteen a completely different person all because of that one significant moment in your life that sparked a flame that burned for the next few years. Most high schoolers are like Michael in this way, they do not do as bad things as him they still go through the same general path starting out good and turning out bad. As I am a high schooler going through these changes, this movie open up my eyes in such a way that I can identify what is happening to me and prevent it from taking the wrong path. Any movie that can do something so powerful to a person deserves a good review. I think that this movie was great, it was and is still one of the best movies I have ever seen and it will stay in my thoughts for weeks to come. It has a great storyline, plot, actors, and screenplay. One of the best movies of its time and still one of the greatest movies in america today. I recommend this movie for any teenager willing to stomach down the graphic event portrayed, but if one is going to watch this movie they should definitely watch this with the purpose of identifying the theme and applying it to their own life.



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