Remembering The Godfather2

In the long stretch of time, I will remember that it was the COVID-19 lockdown that brought me to movies and documentaries of Netflix. For two nights I have been watching “The Godfather.”

I was still in London when Baria Alamuddin asked me to take her place in a conference of Islamic leaders in Baghdad to be hosted by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. It is a source of many treasured memories. I will never forget the sound of wake up chimes and Arabic prayer chants.
We could not even go near him let alone interview him. Saddam Hussein was a tall man with a commanding presence but it was later when I returned to London that I knew more about him. It was astounding to know from a Sunday Times article that he was a great fan of the movie “The Godfather.”

It said Saddam watched it day and night to draw inspiration from it.

William Neikirk in Chicago Tribune wrote: Saddam Hussein`s favorite movie is said to be “The Godfather,” a stark portrayal of a megalomaniac Mafia don who brutally overcomes the odds to slay his enemies and become kingpin of the underworld.

This self-selected metaphor could not have been more apt for the 53-year-old Iraqi president who has led his nation into a war with a superpower.

Hussein is a cunning leader who has delivered many economic gains for his people. Yet his Baathist regime also has been driven by intrigue, murder, fear and a cult of personality that links Hussein with Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar and even Hammurabi, the great lawgiver who ruled 4,000 years ago.

To those who know Hussein and have studied his past, the Godfather image gives some clues to how he might react during the duration of the war under the US-led coalition’s relentless bombing. Psychiatrists and other experts who have tried to read him contend that he will fight to the end.

“Saddam is quite unyielding and is hoping to achieve greater glory even if he is defeated militarily,” said Jerrold Post, a psychiatrist who prepares portraits of foreign leaders for the US government.

The public record of Hussein, gleaned from various published sources, supports this conclusion, but it also yields a view of a highly complex man who can react unpredictably and even press for peace and compromise when least expected.

In a book on Hussein, authors Judith Miller and Laurie Mylroie say that during the dark days of the war with Iran, Hussein made overtures to Egypt and even Israel for assistance, though it isn’t clear what form assistance, if there was any. And with his military exhausted, he gratefully accepted Iran’s peace offer though he had started the war in 1980.

Such instances of flexibility are rare. Hussein has shown himself as single-minded zealot willing to take enormous risks to achieve the Baathist Party’s goal of Arab unity. He tends to overreach and deal
with the consequences later through cunning calculation on the spot, analysts say.

Many analysts believe Hussein – “Saddam” in Arabic means the one who confronts” – has become a prisoner of his own myth and quest for power.
Asked once if he dreamed of filling a role such as that of
Nebuchadnezzar, he said, “By God, I do indeed dream and wish for this. It is an honor for any human being to dream of such a role.”

That’s a large ambition for a poor boy born on April 28, 1937, in a small village near Takrit, an economically depressed town that was bombed by coalition planes Sunday. The record isn’t clear whether his father died before he was born or abandoned him afterward.

His stepfather, say Miller and Mylroie, abused him as a child and forced him to steal chickens and sheep for resale. Hussein would later recall how his stepfather would awaken him: “Get up, you son of a whore, and look after the sheep.”

He did not start school until he was 10, about the time he went to live with Khairallah Talfah, an uncle and schoolteacher who later would become Baghdad’s mayor. One story is that he arrived with a gun strapped to his side, prophetic if true because Hussein is said to have a great love for weapons.

From his uncle, who once penned a pamphlet titled, “Three Whom God Should Not Have Created: Persians, Jews and Flies,” he learned hate, intrigue and politics. Khairallah had been kicked out of the Iraqi army for supporting a pro-Nazi coup foiled by the British in 1941 and fed his hatred of Western powers to the impressionable young Hussein. Later, Hussein would have to remove his uncle from his mayor’s post because of corruption, Miller and Mylroie report.

I wrote an entire column on him and how he patterned his leadership based on his admiration for “The Godfather.” I now understand where his tall commanding stature came from – a time when he was ill-treated as a child.

He is not the only leader with a favorite movie. In an interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica (partially translated by The Hollywood Reporter) the Argentina-born pontiff has revealed some of his favorite films. As the child of Italian parents, it’s not a big surprise he has particular affection for many classics of Italian cinema. Federico Fellini’s La Strada, Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard and Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City are three of the classic films mentioned by the Pope as personal favorites. All three films are regular fixtures on critics’ “best films of all time” lists.

What about other people of influence? What films are they particularly fond of when they are granted the rare opportunity to watch one?

Barack Obama has called the Godfather Part I and II his favourite films, while wisely rejecting the much maligned Part III.

Kim Jong-un The North Korean leader is said to be a big fan of Jackie Chan. His cinema fandom has nothing on his father’s obsessions, though. He even kidnapped a South Korean filmmaker and tried to force him to make a localised, socialist version of Godzilla.

Vladimir Putin has expressed his enthusiasm for The Shield and the Sword – a 1968 Soviet film about a Russian agent who manages to infiltrate Germany’s SS during World War II.