Summary
Frank Pantangeli is stewing over the fact that Michael didn't plead the fifth amendment, while the feds who have him in custody assure him that he'll be living easy after he testifies the next day. Frank is clearly in despair over both testifying and the plea deal he made to spend the rest of his life in this house on an army base. Back in Nevada, Tom Hagen lays out for Michael how Roth set up Pantangeli to turn on Michael, and how the feds were able to ensnare him in a plea deal. On the subject of Roth's elaborate game of chess with the Corleones, Michael goes to confront Fredo about his participation in Roth's attempt on his life. Fredo says he didn't know it would be a hit, but makes it clear that he agreed to help Roth since he was passed over in the family and finally wanted his own cut of the action. Michael tells Fredo that he's nothing to him anymore and never wants to see Fredo again. Michael tells a lieutenant he doesn't want anything to happen to Fredo while their mother is alive.
At Frank Pantangeli's Senate hearing, Michael walks in with an older man dressed in a very odd way. Frank seems dumbstruck by the sight of this man and quickly registers the gravity of the situation. When the questioning starts, Frank contradicts his sworn affidavit and denies knowing or working for Michael Corleone, saying he told the FBI what they wanted to hear in order to cut a good deal. A senator demands to know who the man sitting with Michael is and Tom Hagen says it's Frank's brother, who flew in from Italy at his own expense to support his brother. The hearing is derailed. Tom tells Frank's brother that the family's honor remains intact.
Back at their hotel, Kay informs Michael that she's taking the children and leaving, that she's leaving the marriage. Michael, predictably, doesn't handle it well and begins gently pleading with Kay, telling her that he'll change and he'll earn her forgiveness, believing that Kay blames him for the miscarriage. But it wasn't a miscarriage, Kay tells him. She got an abortion so that another one of Michael's sons would not be born to continue the family's business. She knows Michael would never forgive, and he clearly won't, since his response is to hit her and tell her she'll never take his children.
Flashback to the young Vito Corleone taking his family on a trip to his hometown in Sicily. We quickly learn the intent of the trip is a visit to Don Ciccio, the man who killed Vito's entire family. Seemingly approaching Don Ciccio about his olive oil importing business, Vito makes his move and kills him, proving Ciccio's earlier suspicions that Vito would come back to kill him true. Flash forward to the present and we are at the wake for Vito's wife, the Corleone matriarch, as Fredo weeps over her open casket. Fredo asks Tom where Michael is and Tom says he's waiting for Fredo to leave. But Tom lets Connie go visit Michael at the boathouse. Connie tells Michael she plans to move with her children onto the Nevada compound, and pleads with Michael to forgive Fredo. In the midst of her pleading, Connie kisses Michael's ring. Next, we see Michael walk through the wake to embrace Fredo, to show that he is letting his brother back into the family.
Michael and Rocco catch Michael up on Roth's travel sagas, as he travels the world trying to escape US custody. But it's clear that he'll be flying into Miami, and Michael wants him met at the airport and killed. Tom is incredulous, saying it's impossible, but Michael doesn't give him a choice. He then interrogates Tom about his plans to move to Las Vegas and take over as vice president of a casino, but Tom is obviously hurt by this. He says he's always been loyal to Michael and will stay. Outside, Fredo is teaching Michael's son Anthony how to fish. Tom then goes to visit Frank at the army barracks where they reminisce on the family's former glory and allude to an agreement where if Frank kills himself, all will be forgiven and his family will be taken care of. As Tom shakes Frank's hand goodbye, he grabs Frank's wrist.
At the compound, we find Kay visiting the children. But Connie is telling her Michael is coming and she has to leave, leading to a protracted struggle where Kay tries to get Anthony to give her a kiss goodbye. When Michael finally does come down, he shares an icy stare with Kay and slams the door in her face. Anthony is about to go fishing with Fredo but gets pulled away at the last minute to go to Reno. Fredo is taken out on the boat, into the lake, and shot. Michael watches through the bay window of the house. Frank is found in his bathtub, dead with his wrists slashed. Roth is murdered upon his arrival at the Miami airport. Michael has cleaned up his mess.
We flashback, this time to a more recent past, when all the Corleone children are gathered around a table awaiting their father's birthday celebration, including Sonny who was killed in the previous film. Here, Michael tells his siblings that he's dropped out of college to join the Marines and fight in World War II. It infuriates Sonny and makes Tom tell Michael that he and his father had plans for Michael. Michael balks at the idea that Tom and Vito had plans for his future, saying he had his own plans. And we flash forward once again to Michael sitting alone, outside, in the winter dusk. The camera zooms in tight and we see the wrinkles that have developed on his cheek.
Analysis
The end of this film is when all of Michael's greatest fears come true, and largely by his own hand. We know from the previous Godfather movie and from his trials and tribulations in Cuba and Las Vegas that Michael wants to make the family's business legitimate. But by the end, he's consolidating power through vengeful hits, just like any old-world mafioso. We've heard Michael express his anxiety that he will lose his family because he's simply trying to do best by them, but we watch him kill Fredo and Frank, cast out Kay, and nearly spurn Tom, purely out of spite and petty self-interest. He even jeopardizes his safety by going after Roth even after having emerged victorious from their power struggle. What brought Michael to this point? Seemingly, Coppola is drawing a throughline connecting Michael's ambition as a businessman with his selfish style as head of the family. We're given constant contrast between Michael and Vito, with Vito working for the people in his community and often shown doting on his children. In stark contrast, Michael only ends up in the same house as his kids once his wife has left him.
One of the most powerful scenes in the entire film—which is saying something—comes during that cold, wordless exchange between Michael and Kay when she's leaving from her visit to the children. Coppola lets us ruminate on the love lost by cutting between shots Michael's expressionless face and Kay's naked fear, but this scene serves so much more of a purpose than simply showing us love lost.
We see the bitter, vengeful Michael framed by the dim, sickly yellow light that defines the atmosphere of the Godfather films, while Kay stands outside in the crisp sunshine. When Michael slams the door in her face, he both leaves Kay out in the cold (quite literally) and locks himself in. Even with that shot of Michael sitting outside looking old, he's enshrined in that same murky yellow light. That flashback that shows Michael telling his siblings that he has different plans for himself than the family reveals a final, scathing irony—that Michael has only played into his father's plans, but in such a way that he gave up all the redemptive qualities his father possessed. It's a sad tale of fate for Michael Corleone and his broader Corleone family. As Tom Hagen says to Frank Pantangeli, the Corleone family used to be like the Roman empire.
With the end of this film, Coppola meditates on the theme of fate and the strange way that fate weaves itself into his characters' lives. It's in these final scenes that we really start to feel that the business started in the old country is never quite finished. Of course, there's Vito's trip back to Sicily to exact revenge upon the man who killed his father, mother, and brother. But Kay's and Michael's big argument in the hotel really holds the key to understanding what Coppola is trying to tell us. Michael, for example, says that Frank decided not to testify against him because of something "between the brothers," as if there was some old debt or agreement from the Pantangelis' days together in Italy. When Kay says why she got the abortion, she references that "Sicilian thing that's been going on for 2000 years."
Perhaps for Coppola, family is a vessel for a weird kind of destiny, for a strange cosmic debt. In his book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Peter Biskind recounts how happy Coppola was that his father Carmine won an Oscar for his work composing the score for The Godfather Part II. As Biskind tells it, Coppola was glad that his father had finally won recognition after spending years as a struggling artist bitter about other people's success. And in that strange twist of fate that would seem to match Francis Ford Coppola's own sensibilities, Carmine Coppola dropped the Oscar statue on the way back to his seat after accepting the award and it smashed into pieces.
