American director Francis Ford Coppola attends the press conference for “Megalopolis” during the 77th Cannes Film Festival, in Cannes, France, on May 17, 2024.
Photo: Photo by Victor Boyko/Getty Images
“There is nothing more terrible than a pretentious movie. A movie that aspires to something truly great and doesn’t achieve it is shit. But what I tell myself, at the end of the day, is: fuck it! I don’t care if it’s pretentious or if it’s not (…) all I know is that I’m going to see that movie”
FF Coppola
The reasons for this title to arrive with a great burden were diverse. The director had been planning it for more than forty years; there was no study that produced it; FF Coppola spent one hundred and twenty million dollars making it. Voices are being added about the alleged harassing behavior of the octogenarian director towards his female protagonists, which ended up heating up and stirring things up. The custom within the festival world should be mentioned: waiting too long tends to divide the audience. It happened in spades with the octogenarian director’s most recent work—it is said to be his last.
In the film, a voice in off It talks about the end of an empire and how the heritage should be preserved. The idea of the architect and rising star of local politics, Caesar Catilina (Adam Driver), the protagonist, is how to turn New York into a bigger, more spectacular, happier place: Megalopolis. Meanwhile, Catiline, dressed in a mix of contemporary and Roman, stands on the ledge of the Chrysler Building, where he lives on one of its top floors, to lasso and ask time to stop. And time obeys. On the other side, the mayor’s daughter, Frank Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), and the children of the mega millionaires party like rock stars Pills and coca are consumed on the skins of young women. The music and editing used by the filmmaker show the frenzy with which the bodies move.
Catilina is famous and bombastic as a professional in the highest society. The artist par excellence with the power over time. A character who behaves as he tells the song that says “…The money that falls into my hands, I spend on women, drinking and dancing.” At the biggest festival in the city, with chariot races and gladiators included, when banker Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight), the protagonist’s uncle, marries journalist Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), the architect is beaten and beaten. then imprisoned. The mayor, with very low popularity and an enemy of Catiline, takes advantage of the moment of the idol’s fall to attack him with the force of his speech. So does Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf), the hero’s cousin and with political ambitions as well, who takes advantage of the screens at the Coliseum where the party is held to show scandalous images of the architect/politician with a minor, all while her virginity is auctioned. for millions of dollars to raise funds for the city.
Catilina’s secretary and right-hand woman, daughter of the mayor, Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel), manages to find certain issues that end up solving the legal situation of A. Driver’s character. But the architect has known how to step on personal calluses and ambitions of very visible figures. Ambitions that the adversaries themselves or their assistants want to prosecute. The idol of New York City falls for the second time. A fall that, due to its form, creates a martyr in Caesar. With his strength renewed, he continues with his Megalopolis project. On the other hand, Clodio has won over part of the people with the motto “power to the people” and this slogan is proclaimed as the embodiment of the same.
Megalopolis, Both booed and applauded at Cannes, it has been called a “suicide project.” “Fascinating without passion”, “overloaded”, “mega-boring”; as “ambitious masterpiece”, “bold experiment”. Another custom at festivals is to ask big names to get out of their comfort zone and take risks. If that’s why, no more could be demanded of FF Coppola. But on the Croissete there remain many doubts among both the public and critics. The distributor Imax was the one that said yes to the world premiere. When the foam of the festival subsides, Coppola’s phrase with which this text begins will have one meaning or another for those who see it.
