That is a great post, Horse's Head. Those are all great scenes, and you pinpointed what makes them so resonant. But that description of the flashback scene at the end of GF2 -- exquisite! You captured it: After all those years of blindness to what he had become, Michael finally has his eyes opened in that one irreversible moment; and, as you said, he becomes "a man fully aware of what he has just done and the moral burden that goes with it."