Diane Keaton passed away over the weekend and I feel compelled to write something about her. Where does one start in a career so stacked as hers? She’s in some of the quintessential new-Hollywood films of the 70s with her Woody Allen collaborations Annie Hall (in which she played the titular character) and Manhattan. The second act of her career was defined by classic rom-coms including her collaborations with Nancy Meyers such as Baby Boom, Father of the Bride 1 & 2, and my personal favorite, Something’s Gotta Give. The last act of her career she was in undeniably effective comedies such as the Book Club movies. However, for this piece I’d like to talk about her breakthrough movie, The Godfather.
I know it’s incredibly cliche for a film bro to explain why The Godfather’s great (as pointed out in a terrifically on-point joke in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie), and I’m not trying to make it sound like this is some hidden gem in her career. No, this is arguably the most famous and well-regarded film of all time, so it’s not a hidden gem in anybody’s career, but when people talk about The Godfather I always feel as though Keaton’s performance goes criminally undermentioned. I would go a step further to say that The Godfather wouldn’t be nearly as well-remembered without it. (And yes, I will be spoiling this 53-year-old movie in this piece.)
I think it’s safe to say that Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) is one of the great protagonists. This is surprising only for the reason that he’s arguably a very static protagonist. Obviously not externally—at the start of the film he’s just gotten back from the war and is entirely removed from his family’s business, and by the end he’s become the “don” of the family and seemingly has no trouble getting his hands dirty. No, I say “static” because internally it’s so clear that this is who Michael was meant to be his whole life. Proof of this can be found in Vito (Marlon Brando)’s reaction to finding out that Michael has left the country, and in the classic scene of Michael’s hands not shaking while lighting a cigarette outside the hospital. I’m getting off-track, though. Let’s get back to Keaton.
Keaton plays Katherine (“Kay”), Michael’s girlfriend at the beginning of the film, and wife by the end. In their first scene together, at the wedding between Connie Corleone (Talia Shire) and Carlo Rizzi (Gianni Russo), Kay pries Michael about the dynamics of the family. From the beginning, Michael is quick to shrug things off with vague but confident-sounding explanations, but it’s clear that she loves him and is willing to accept this in part because he says he doesn’t want to be a part of the family business.
On the page, Kay’s character might seem too naive to be an interesting character (absolutely no disrespect to the late, great Mario Puzo), but Keaton amends this by playing these early instances of affection so well. It is easy for us to believe that because of her love for Michael she’s choosing to push away the parts of him that are unsettling.
This comes to a head in the final scene of the film, which is what I’m going to spend the remainder of this article talking about.
After the disturbing, but climactic sequences of the assassinations of the heads of the rival families, Michael walks away from the scene of Carlo’s strangulation, and it would make sense to end the film here, but then we cut back to Michael sitting in his office, looking just as cool and confident as Brando had at the beginning of the film. After a moment, his sister, Connie, charges in. Kay witnesses Connie’s accusation that Michael murdered her husband and tries to console her, but then Connie yells “Want to know how many men he had killed with Carlo? Read the papers – read the papers! That’s your husband! That’s your husband!” and Kay grows quiet. Connie is ushered out of the room and Kay watches Michael silently as he paces around the room and coldly declares, “She’s hysterical.” We see Kay’s face, revealing that her idea of her husband is falling to pieces in this moment. It’s not showy work by Keaton; it’s understated in a beautiful way. When she finally confronts him verbally and asks if Connie’s accusations are true, he screams “Enough!” at her. It’s the first time in the film that we’ve really seen Michael have a reaction like this, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that this is because Kay’s the one person he still can’t truly lie to. This is again enforced after he does lie to her and tells her that it’s not true. This is the one thing that differentiates Michael from Vito: his genuine love for his wife. She falls into his arms and once his face is out of her line of sight, we can see the soul fading from it. Keaton’s playing relief, but it’s clearly a false relief. We know that she’s lying to herself the same way Michael is.
Then, she declares that they both need a drink and she walks off into the next room, through the open door, expecting him to follow. As she’s making the drinks, Michael’s men surround him and refer to him as “Don Corleone.” One of Michael’s men walks up to the door of the office and shuts it, and the final shot of the most iconic film of all time isn’t of Brando or Pacino. It’s of Diane Keaton as Kay watching the man she loves come fully into himself, and it’s extremely unsettling. It’s also beautiful. Obviously The Godfather would have been great without this final shot, but I think without it, you don’t get one of the definitive masterpieces that it is. In other words, Keaton makes the movie. In a film filled with revolutionary and career-defining performances, Keaton has always stood out to me, from the first time I watched it. She was a true star and will be missed.
As we wrap up, I think it’s time I admit something embarrassing: I have never seen The Godfather Part II (or III for that matter, but for some reason people don’t get quite as angry about that). Maybe it’s just because I haven’t gotten around to it, or maybe it’s secretly because of how much I love the open-ended conclusion of the first. And, by that nature, the final shot of Keaton. I know that Part II is also widely regarded as a masterpiece, but perhaps a part of me is scared that nothing will quite live up to that ending.
Maybe now though, in the wake of Diane Keaton’s death, it’s time for me to finally dust off my father’s blu-ray and pop it into my player–if for no other reason than to see a “new” performance from the illustrious Diane Keaton one last time. I think I just might do that.
Farewell, Diane. You will be remembered.
