Watching Megalopolis, by Francis Ford Coppola, is for any film enthusiast, believer in everything or just on Saturday nights, like attending mass for any faithful. But not just any mass. More like a dawn mass at the Vatican officiated by the pope himself with the Benedictine monks of Santo Domingo de Silos singing the Kyrie eleison. Amen. That's, to say something equivalent to witnessing a comet passing by.
Hours after the start of the screening, it is not clear whether it was completely disappointing or, due to the unusual experience, the gateway to a new era or an now incomprehensible universe. Certainly, both. And this is regardless of whether the film, in which the greatest living filmmaker (or one of them) has invested a lifetime (he started talking about it in the 80s) and all his savings (the acknowledged cost is 120 million), is, not necessarily in this order, tiresome, pompous, erratic, self-indulgent, arrogant, and even ugly (very ugly). It hurts. And it hurts even more because this, as announced on the film's last poster, is explicitly the testament of the creator of Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, The Conversation...
Megalopolis parallels the story of its production with its own plot, the future of the protagonist with the filmmaker's past. "A man from the past to build the future," is heard. The plot revolves around a visionary architect portrayed by Adam Driver, inseparable from the director at all times. The comedic moment comes when he announces the name he will give to his future son, indeed, Francis. His idea is to rebuild an ideal city from the rubble of the one that has just collapsed, but that already showed decadent signs long before a Soviet satellite (yes, it's still from the USSR) exploded over it. The artist's work "in his leap into the void," as repeated, stops time. And that applies equally to inside and outside the movie; to, once again, Coppola as well as to Adam Driver's character.
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A video shows Francis Ford Coppola kissing and harassing several young girls who act as extras in 'Megalopolis'
The nemesis or antagonist is the mayor played by Giancarlo Esposito, whose daughter, an influencer (Nathalie Emmanuel), may want to be the mother of the artist's offspring rather than her father's peacemaker. Don't ask for more explanations, because there are none, and those that exist are so confusing that they overwhelm. In the rest of the cast, Aubrey Plaza, Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, or Laurence Fishburne. All of them and a Shia LaBeouf so determined to sabotage himself that it's almost endearing.
And all this set in a future United States that is actually a replica of the Roman Republic in the time of Cicero and Catiline. The subtitle of the film is "A fable." What we learned from the Catilinarias in high school, there it is. And one step further, one of the dialogues is in Latin. Who said that the humanities are useless?
The key is time. As always in an artistic work that prides itself on being so. The past is reproduced in the present and announces the future. And only the force of creation and love are capable of stopping the incessant flow of the arbitrary. On this reasoning, a plot is constructed based on tableaux vivants, more or less impressionistic and imprecise paintings, disconnected from each other and seemingly the product not so much of inspiration as of a much more banal whim. The idea is not to give up narration to make its emptiness explicit or to introduce a reflection on the very meaning of History into the film, no, simply no one seems to have taken the trouble to put things in order. Therefore, the film is at all times so self-condescending (it forgives itself everything) and arrogant (it accepts everything). It goes unfiltered.
If we review the production history, the pain caused by the general shipwreck grows. It was after finishing One from the Heart in 1981 when he started talking about the project. In that film, as beautiful as it was misunderstood, the director used his system known as Silverfish, which, in short, consisted of controlling all aspects of filming (sound, image, or camera position) while incorporating the most advanced digital technologies from a single focal point as a divine eye for a director cum factotum. Very Coppola. In his way, something of his announced intention to emulate live performance in an essentially deferred form was already there.
Subsequently, in 1989, there is evidence that production began at the Cinecittà studios in Rome. Coppola reportedly wrote, as recently summarized in an article by The Guardian, up to 300 versions of the script, and the early drafts were read by many of his loyal actors (Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, or James Caan) and others the size of Paul Newman. Later, 30 hours of the film were filmed, interrupted by the events of September 11. And everything went back to square one.
Coppola has always been obsessed with technology, and his almost messianic vocation as an oracle of New Hollywood has led him to involve himself beyond reason in the latest digital advances that both cinema and the ubiquitous world of images have been capable of. Therefore, it is puzzling that texture presented in Megalopolis is so close to superhero movies that are not The Avengers. And even more incomprehensible is that the humanistic city of the future (which, by the way, is sponsored by a wealthy capitalist who turns good) resembles so much the pasteurized fantasies of Silicon Valley.
The article from The Guardian cited by Steve Rosa reproduces how chaotic the final phase of the film was through the testimonies of much of the team from a shoot that began in the fall of 2022 at the Trilith studios in Atlanta. Through them, beyond the malicious comments, we know that in December, in the middle of a 16-week filming production, most of the art and visual effects staff were fired or resigned. To this, as the cruelest of all, we must add the illness of Eleonor, Coppola's wife, who finally passed away on April 12. The film is dedicated to her in the most emotional and fleeting shot of all.
It wouldn't be the first time that a film causes consternation due to pure rejection and ends up becoming a reference. Apocalypse Now, just sticking to the director, was a constant doubt rewritten every day during filming, shot amid perpetual fire. Now and forever it is a masterpiece. Without time, as the architect Driver and director Coppola would say. But it also took time for Vertigo, by Hitchcock, and even for Casablanca, by Curtiz, to be understood. This is not the case with Megalopolis. It cannot be. It would be too absurd, and the quota of absurdities at this point is already exhausted. But, on the other hand, we will not stop talking about this film for a long time. That's for sure. Never before has anyone crashed against the same sky as the most restless, voracious, and celestial of filmmakers just did. Three Hail Marys and amen. It's mind-blowing.