Perhaps inevitably, Diane Keaton based her interpretation of the role of Kaye in Francis Coppola's Godfather series on the director's wife, Eleanor. After all, there in front of her on a semi-regular basis was the epitome of the dutiful WASP bystander-partner; a woman who, through quiet fascination, subjugated the more expressive aspects of her personality for the privilege of accommodating a young, intelligent, and ambitious Italian-American as he climbed the ranks of a hermetic, unforgiving industry.
The Real Eleanor Coppola
But, just like Keaton's Kaye, forces launched by a combination of feminism, marital frustration and irrepressible individualism propelled the real Eleanor Coppola (neé Neil) to the fore - first in 1979, through her book and film on the on the making Apocalypse Now, and now with a grander, more personal journal, Notes On A Life.
Notes On A Life
In the manner of hubby Francis' Godfather 2, Notes On Life uses its central figure's current conundrums as springboards into moments from the past. Film and book both track the triumphant-tragic story of a colorful extended family: the Corleones as they struggle with money and murder, the Coppolas as they contend with fame and accident, the latter claiming son-brother Giancarlo, via speedboat, in 1986.
A Healing Journal
Needless to say, Notes On A Life is also a healing journal, as Giancarlo's ghost pursues Eleanor and company through its 260 pages. It's part of a pack of delicately woven life threads that includes the struggle to age with dignity, bouts of artistic frustration, and that constant nag, the second-guessing that is so much a part of parenting.
A New Voice
In the overstocked armoire of memoir, these are familiar elements - yet Coppola expresses them in a voice new to the canon. A lifelong lover and practitioner of visual art, Coppola writes with a constant, appreciative eye for the textural, the miniature, and the personalized. So ingrained is this propensity, in fact, that it's even been passed on genetically; as Eleanor goes on at length about hotel accoutrements across the globe, we suddenly understand why daughter Sofia made all of those 17th century objet d'arts the stars of her Marie Antoinette and not Kirstin Dunst (Sofia, in fact, thanked her mom during her Oscar speech for 2002's Lost In Translation for "always encouraging me to make art.")
This voice is a clear break from Francis, with his dark, sober classicism, from nephew Nicholas Cage, with his focused surrealism, and even, despite the aforementioned crossover, from Sofia, with her quirky vacuity. Eleanor snakes silently free of the Coppola chorus to solo with the most tempered version of the trademark family intensity.
A Lifelong Battle
While it's perfectly possible that, the onset of her sixties be damned, there's more to come from this alcove-dwelling jack-of-all-trades, odds are good that in the end, she'll never come first, nor even second or third, in people's minds when reflecting on the Coppolas. Such a slight, she confesses repeatedly, is a fate with which she continues to struggle. Let us take selfish delight, then, in this lifelong battle - for it is the aspiration to end it that is the rich, blue center of her creative spark, the latest ember of which is a poetically weaved speck whose rhythms are worth getting lost in.
