Megalopolis

An ancient drama set in a futuristic New York with literary quotes from classics and existential contemplations, ridiculously incongruent with the film’s overall execution. It’s sexy once and funny once, but in its aesthetics, the rest of the film is a mix of styles ranging from embarrassing to kitschy, making it absolutely unsellable to a broader audience. Crowd scenes with dozens of extras, costumes with motifs from ancient Rome and digital scenes out of a television fantasy for retirement homes. The groundless, half-baked motif of stopping time and many other outlined ideas go nowhere. Is it possible that Coppola would consider this to be his great final work to which he gave his all? Just as he kicked his career into high gear with the long wedding scene in The Godfather, he lays it to rest with this horrible theatrical event for the cream of Megalopolis like something out of the mega-flop Caligula. Otherwise, Nathalie Emmanuel is beautiful, Aubrey Plaza is dangerously seductive and Shia LaBeouf is the best of them all. [Cannes FF] (19/05/2024)

Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis brings us to a futuristic, decadent and antiquely stylized New York, New Rome. I found this combination of ancient culture (clothes, names, entertainment) with a futuristic vision of the world very appealing, and the entire film is punctuated with quotes from ancient thinkers, which only underscore their timelessness in how they still apply to today. They highlight the absurdity of certain aspects of modern times, especially the fact that we are still the same people (animals) as in the days of ancient Rome, we are just playing at being a civilized and advanced society. This is portrayed brilliantly in the film, but that's probably the end of all the pros of this "masterpiece". I should also mention that although my favourite of the entire cast is Adam Driver (who was excellent as usual), the biggest praise should go to Shia LaBeouf, who once again shows something completely new, and proves that he can still surprise. Megalopolis had a lot of potential, a lot of great ideas that deserved to be fleshed out more. The huge disappointment for me was that the main character may have the power to stop time, but he doesn't make any use of it, I thought that would have been much more meaningful or impactful to the development of the film. As it is, the whole thing just comes across as a critique of society hoping for a brighter tomorrow, coupled with a simple family drama without much transcendence, which I find very insufficient. At the end of the film, I wondered if I had accidentally fallen asleep during the screening, that I must have missed something... Or maybe I just didn't understand the whole thing. [Festival de Cannes 2024] (21/05/2024)

San Sebastian Film Festival: Film Number 18. I was really looking forward to Megalopolis, I even got up early to go to the morning screening. I paid no heed to the negative and contradictory reactions. I watched the trailer about five times and was excited the way I had been for Babylon, for lavish cinematic entertainment. But I didn't get it, or at least not entirely. Francis Ford Coppola's idea is certainly resonant, fundamental, and actually quite topical, but he overdid it in terms of his handling of it and created a rather confused and unclear mess. Too bad; if this was supposed to be his masterpiece, it failed. What he certainly did do, however, was put together an appealing consisting of Adam Driver and Nathalie Emmanuel, and definitively pigeonhole Aubrey Plaza as a representative of lustful and irritating women. (26/09/2024)

Caligula meets movies of Neil Breen. Megalopolis has been given its name because it is a very peculiar and difficult to grasp work that, like the titular city, portrays the dazzling materialization of the megalomania of a remarkable and vain artist that falls into utter ruins and, paradoxically, also rises. This allegorical vision of Francis Ford Coppola takes more from his experimental work of recent years than from his earlier lauded epics that everyone loves, and historically it may be compared to the miscalculated retreats of Cannon Films and the sprawling genre retreats of Kevin Costner, ventures that reek of boundless love for the work but were blinded by creative obsession, lack of judgement and perhaps sheer ignorance, and which flopped commercially. Coppola must have gone into all of this knowing that his film, in whatever distribution form, was going to face a fall more epic than that of the Roman Empire, yet he has become a filmmaking dilettante in his old age who simply has to jump in headfirst out of spite. He has my admiration for that. Megalopolis cannot be recommended as a good film by any means, but it can be described as a fascinating and adventurous one. That said, I would add something you would probably find written on a sign at a construction site of the titular city: enter at your own risk. (27/09/2024)

I’ll always respect Coppola for his monumental contributions to cinema—Apocalypse Now and The Godfather are untouchable classics. But his swan song, Megalopolis, is something I’d prefer to forget a few hours after watching. Seeing this on an IMAX screen is a wild ride, and honestly, it's impressive how much effort Coppola put into making this film happen so late in his career. But just because it was a monumental effort doesn’t mean I have to like it. Visually, Megalopolis feels more like a Netflix series, and thematically, it's shallow and overly utopian, spouting random philosophical quotes without offering anything that sticks or really develops into a meaningful idea. It’s like Coppola had a lot he wanted to say before the curtain closed, but instead of landing a coherent message, it’s just a mess of thoughts thrown at the wall. The film reminded me of The Apple by Cannon Films—another overambitious, indulgent project that ended up being confusing and hard to sit through. I went in with an open mind, hoping Coppola might prove the critics wrong, but sadly, the negative buzz is justified. Megalopolis is, unfortunately, a "Megaflopolis" and a rough final note to an otherwise legendary career. But hey, if this is the send-off Coppola wanted, so be it. (28/09/2024)