Is this the first time that The Godfather has been re-released?

No, it has been re-released many times, the first in 1997 for its 25th anniversary, then many times for the US audience and the last edition in 2017. The highly digitised restoration, spanning 4,000 hours of working on each image, was overseen by director Francis Ford Coppola himself from 300 film cartons. Many argued if such a scale was necessary considering the film had been watched many times over and was available on modern platforms. But Coppola said the value lay in recreating the big theatre experience of 1972. “The whole thing is trying to get it to look like it did at the original screening of The Godfather, when it was only two weeks old, not 20 years old or 50 years old.” After it became a huge hit in 1972, Paramount Studios was under pressure to release many prints and wore the original negative out. So, the frames are now exactly how Coppola wanted them to be.

Besides, he should know about money’s worth. The Godfather originally cost $6 million to make and in today’s time would be equivalent to $40 million. Coppola spent wisely considering the location shoots were spread over New York, Las Vegas, Hollywood and even Sicily. The film has such a hold on public consciousness across generations that any effort to revisit it is worth it.

For a film that is ostensibly alpha male-oriented and larger than life, about mafia culture, is violent and time-sensitive, what’s its appeal in current times?

Coppola’s timelessness lies in the fact that each generation can relate to the narrative, reinterpret it from their perspective and discover a new facet. On the face of it, it is about the mob but it satisfies all elements of a classical drama, a tragedy to be precise — love, desire, dreams, ambition, greed, brutality, dilemma, hubris, overreach and the eventual descent into nothingness. And there’s human frailty that every flesh and blood character must succumb to. Each character is well-rounded yet flawed.

The heart of the story rests in the family and every member’s protectionist zeal to secure it. That’s why even Don Corleone’s noble war veteran son, Michael, gets co-opted and becomes a criminal in the end, ostensibly to save his folks. While many thought Coppola was lionising the mafia boss lifestyle, he actually intended Godfather to show the great cost that culture exacted of people and how it destroyed lives.

Why do we look forward to the iconic scenes?

When the Corleones murder their rivals or become victims themselves, it is insidious, cold-blooded, pre-meditated, stark and bone-chilling. The horror is in your face without the embellishment or noise. The episodes are physically stifling and numbing. When a movie producer wakes up to find his prized horse’s severed and bloodied head in bed for refusing to give one of the don’s loyalists a break, it is not just a threat but a gasp for dear life.

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Or when Connie murders her godfather Don Altobello at the opera with a poisoned cannoli box and watches with satisfaction from a distance, it shows the deepest plunge into inhumanity. The darkness in the frames is a pointer to the underbelly that fuels the quintessential American dream. Chasing it meant killing the soul. This is best demonstrated in the last scene of Part I with a morally corrupt Michael shutting the door on his wife Kay, a look of disbelief in her eyes about the man she loved and what he had become.

Why do women watch the Godfather considering they have few lines and exist in frames as bystanders, always bowing to the toxic diktats of men?

Coppola believed in presenting striking contrasts to make a statement. In this case, the women become a moral counterpoint. They may seem acquiescent but Kay does manage to walk out of the Corleone’s no-divorce diktat. She hopes to be an alternative support system for her children despite Michael shutting her out once too often. She is like the conscience buzzing in his head. Connie, who hates her brother for killing her husband and Fredo, and hurts herself with one mistaken affair after another, kneels before him. But in that supplication, she controls Michael, plans his moves, even anointing his successor Vincent. Apollonia, Michael’s first wife, embodies Michael’s transformation from innocence to experience. Meanwhile, the wilful Mary, Michael’s daughter, matches him with her stubbornness and fiery spirit. But she has to die so that Michael can lose in the end. She is his ultimate moral compass and in death unmakes him as he shrieks in pain in his self-destructive world.