People have their own preferences and some of it involves their own feelings towards the actresses. I like to stick to Mario Puzo and respect that the characters belonged to him, not me. I don't think Mario intended for it to be a contest between the two women as women are peripheral anyway. Also, there are contradictions/inconsistencies between the film and the book that are maddening to me. However, Mario only used the word "love" for Michael twice--that he "loved" Kay and "loved his father". Kay was his dream girl. Al Pacino said that Michael loved Kay from the beginning. Remember that Mario's character of Michael was a man who had dreams and I do not ever want to dismiss this important deep aspect of Michael.
Also, this transformation of Michael is considered the "destruction of a man" yet it seems like commenters want him in this destructed state and in a relationship they think will better facilitate it. We are introduced to Michael and Kay after years of being together. Michael loved Kay, respected her and shared his dreams with her...and she was more important to him than his family. They also had an mind-to-mind relationship--with humour and wit. He liked that. He could talk with her. Michael was a brooder and a thinker and he liked to talk with his girlfriend (not a guy's guy--beer drinking with the buddies)--so his girlfriend had to be that someone he could trust his thoughts to. He would consult with Kay (ie. his surgery) and ask her "what should I do". She didn't care how he looked, she loved him but explained why he should do it. He knew he got the truth from her. Michael needed that. People forget the intellectual part of Michael and how he needs to connect to the one person.
En route to Sicily, he was sure Kay would be disgusted with him, imagined the moment when she would read the papers believing that once she knew that he was in that world he claimed to abandon, that it was over for them, that she would never want him again. Yet, he still thought about her until he met Apollonia. When he returned from Sicily he wasn't glad to see anyone in his family but he was glad to see Kay and when he was with her (in book only six months transpired from Sicily and Apo's death) he was home. Kay was more than just business. She was his connection to home, his humanity and his dreams. He had to be a better man with her...and Michael wanted to believe he was a better man. Kay called him on his sh.t because that is what women in a free world do. I love Apollonia too and Michael fell hard.
We are introduced to them at the moment of meeting. He lost her at the most intense stage of his feelings for her and that would live on. But what about the feelings of a woman? She did not feel for Michael like Kay did. Their love was new and not tested for time and I believe that in time their marriage would have been typical for Italian culture relationships that come together in those circumstances (me being Italian). Especially after kids are born and the women (who were not in love in the first place) focus on the "mother" and not the "wife". Mario offers few words regarding relationships--again peripheral so read the few clues carefully. The facts about that relationship: she was disinterested in him, not attracted (spoke with brother and laughed with him instead)...until she was gifted jewelry and was persuaded of the life she would have; she was self-involved but then he was constantly running with snot and she was only 16 for crying out loud. He let her drive--women in Sicily weren't allowed. Cars were forbidden to women. They were just married and Apollonia convinced him to let her stay with her parents for an extended period of time...more than Michael wanted. She didn't care if she was away from him, no mention that she would miss him, and didn't linger with him in bed on their last day. Michael noticed that because he was hoping she would. She doesn’t. He consoled himself thinking it must be because she was making a special breakfast for them on their last day--yet he went down to the kitchen only to find his guard sitting at table eating. The movie doesn’t show this. I wish it did but Mario doesn’t expand on the feelings anyway. But here's the clue: In both book and film the guard in the kitchen perceptively volunteers "Apollonia will make a good "American" wife". (Think about that. All who comment about her being the Sicilian wife he needs so he can be the Sicilian criminal).
Like usual the servants aren't blind. So what were they seeing? People comment on how Apollonia would have been the submissive for Michael as opposed to independent Kay. Apollonia didn’t have the benefits and free world upbringing Kay had yet Apollonia didn't listen to him. She was in the car when he told her not to. She readily snatched at liberties. It's interesting to me to think what America would have done for her in combination with being married to a man she was not gravitated to in the first place--big What if story--but Mario doesn't go there, it never happened. Mario doesn't offer words of their relationship to indicate in any way that the core parts of Michael would in time have been nurtured or satisfied by Apo. To say it wouldn't be necessary for him means that you need to dismiss Michael and who he is as a man and what he needs in the long game. Also you would need to argue that if his dreams were dead and the dreamer in him finally destroyed that he wouldn't be tormented...and even happy and content with the woman who shares his life while in this destructed state.
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