Coppola’s “Megalopolis”: A Titan’s Swan Song or a Cautionary Tale?
The Cannes Film Festival hasn’t even reached its midpoint, yet it feels like the most challenging moment for film critics has already arrived: the premiere of Francis Ford Coppola’s long-gestating opus, “Megalopolis.” The myths surrounding its creation echo the struggles of the Hollywood titan’s previous films. The ambitious project struggled to find funding, leading Coppola to convert a portion of his family’s vineyard into the film’s $120 million budget. Nearly 40 years in the making, “Megalopolis” has haunted the director’s imagination since the late 1970s. Now, this “Titanic,” birthed from a fevered mind (it’s hard to imagine making such a film with a cool head), sets sail into uncharted waters.
Adam Driver as Caesar Catalina in “Megalopolis”
A New Rome Rises
New York City sheds its skin and becomes New Rome. While the Roman Empire’s final year was anything but peaceful, Coppola’s film sees it literally rise from the ashes. The city is ruled by an elite, with Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) clashing with wealthy families (Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Talia Shire). Journalist Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza) provokes the powerful into revealing their secrets, and gladiatorial combat has moved to the ring. Yet, bread and circuses aren’t enough for everyone. Unrest simmers among those excluded from the eternal party, those who dwell in the slums.
“Megalopolis” is an unabashedly autobiographical work, a “My Life in Art” by Francis Ford Coppola. Architect Caesar Catalina (Adam Driver) yearns to build a blessed oasis amidst the urban decay. But he needs funding, patience, and time. Though he can control hours and minutes with a snap of his fingers, obstacles are constantly thrown in the demiurge’s path. Or almost all: Mayor’s daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), deeply in love, is determined to bring paradise on earth closer by any means necessary.
Aubrey Plaza as Wow Platinum in “Megalopolis”
Fantasmagorical Confessions
This confession from a New Hollywood giant takes on the most extravagant, phantasmagorical forms. Pompous pronouncements and quotes from Marcus Aurelius coexist with jokes about erections and scenes of sex that are either too explicit or awkwardly so (though, as we know, the two aren’t mutually exclusive). It’s unclear which is more captivating: watching the film or trying to recount even a fraction of its epic visions in writing. This peplum set in the Big Apple manifests an ornate excess that borders on gilded kitsch. A fake Taylor Swift floats beneath a dome, statues stretch their marble shoulders and wearily slide down the walls, and scaffolding reaches for the sky, where there are no limits. Boundaries, however, are nonexistent, even the conventional ones. At some point, the spectacle spills into the audience, with a pre-arranged actor engaging in dialogue with the screen. The dramaturgy, which formally exists and even draws on the Catiline Conspiracy, operates according to its own laws, or rather, attempts to break free from tedious formalities and embrace anarchic freedom.
Adam Driver as Caesar Catalina in “Megalopolis”
Freedom and its Perils
Freedom is perhaps the film’s most contradictory quality. On one hand, Coppola, at the apex of his career, has achieved total liberation from all possible constraints, social and professional constructs, and cinematic didacticism. “Megalopolis” is such an unrestrained and uninhibited film that one can only envy its level of creative freedom and humbly acknowledge the untamed spirit of a genius. After all, to lead such a large number of respected industry figures into the abyss requires an unconditional and total force of will, multiplied by one’s own investment. He only has to justify the spending to himself. Clearly, Coppola, accustomed to playing big and betting it all on red, has reached a point where he has absolutely nothing left to lose.
But at the same time, freedom can dangerously, and most importantly, imperceptibly, morph into impunity. Legends are told and films are made about Coppola’s survival school on set (remember the contribution of his late wife, Eleanor, and “Heart of Darkness”). But when these resounding and reckless tales clash with ethics, the demiurge’s genius begins to flicker with tyranny. And “Megalopolis” was not without disturbing details about the production process. An article in The Guardian detailed less-than-professional aspects of the filming – undoubtedly free, and therefore frightening (endless delays, confusion among the actors, frivolous flirtations with women on set, and so on).
A Timely Anachronism
The real tragedy (great in its own way, of course) is that Coppola dreamed of taking the place not even of Caesar Catalina, but of Cassandra (let’s take a step towards Greek mythology), foretelling the fall of the empire. The parallel between the United States and the fate of Rome, which bequeathed the republic as a form of government, was meant to stir, to envelop with the stuffiness of fate, and to expose the helplessness and blindness of those who refuse to build something new – the coveted Megalopolis – and move forward. But as the prophecy crawled onto the screen, it turned into a belated obituary. It is no longer possible to deny that the end of the world has long since arrived. And yet, a magic of a completely different charge happened: a categorically outdated film with the glamorous chic of the 2000s and the imperial ambitions of a peplum turned out to be extremely timely. “Megalopolis” stated that the era has indeed passed – and it is not about the hands that built America, but about those that built New Hollywood. The slums and palaces look like postcards from the past: mighty titans sit in megalomaniacal settings and mourn the collapse of old ideals, while everyone around them learns to live with new ones.
P.S. From the author: The rating of “Megalopolis” has nothing to do with the quality of the film; it is impossible to evaluate it with numbers. Rather, the one is a contribution to the future cult status of the film. The more critics destroy it today, the faster it will become a universally recognized masterpiece about the collapse of ideals.