If you go into Coppola’s opus without a heavy belief in romance and a huge cultural knowledge of cinema, you’ll miss the point. Once you’ve got that sorted, all you need is to sit back, relax and enjoy the show — because what a show this is!
You must have read most of the other reviews written by my esteemed colleagues by now. A lot of them didn’t love the film as much as I did — and that’s an understatement. But from the moment I got up from my chair inside the Debussy and walked out of the darkness smack into the cameras of a BBC crew there to catch the first public’s reaction to Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, I loved it! It may turn out to be the most exhilarating title I’ve watched at this year’s Festival de Cannes.
Now, naysayers and those nitpicking at my discordant opinion will think “she only liked the film once it was over, that’s how bad it was.” Nope, it’s that in order to love Megalopolis you have to dive into it and never come up for air, until all is revealed in the end. And in that magical moment — when you realized this is Maestro Coppola’s love song to the movies and to America, and his most personal, intimate film to date — you are hooked. In fact, I wouldn’t mind watching the film again, knowing what I know now.
So, instead of spending my time waxing poetic about this wondrous work of the seventh art, I’m going to let you in on the secrets to fully enjoy it, from the very first frame.
Megalopolis is a film that needs for the viewer to give all of themselves and believe. As the opening credits roll, right under the name of the film Coppola gives us a hint and that hint lies in the words “a fable” written in smaller letters. Do you remember the delight you felt at the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm when your parents read them to you as a child? And the endless possibilities you saw thanks to your imagination when you allowed yourself to inhabit those tales? That’s where your heart and mind need to be, to savor Megalopolis to the fullest. At the core of the story lies Coppola’s genius, baring it all for us to see. The film made me really emotional and when that light and camera flashed in my face to ask for my opinion, I almost burst into tears.
Now another hack to enjoying the film on the first go is to watch the characters unfold and develop, grow up before your eyes. When was the last time you watched a film where people grew, without a lot of make up and gimmicks, right before your eyes? Yup, I thought so, a long long time ago. From little hints, like the shoes the actors wear, to the claustrophobic surroundings they inhabit, Coppola takes his hints from films like Sidney Lumet’s Twelve Angry Men and other classics. He constantly mentions filmmakers, Hitchcock for example and his nods include a four dimensional scene out of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, played with an actor who comes onto the stage with a mic to interview Cesar (Adam Driver). I’ll admit I was a bad girl and, after looking around for any security in the theater, I took a shot of it. Am I ever glad I did!
There is also a segment where the screen splits in three, right out of the classic 1927 silent film Napoléon vu par Abel Gance for which the visionary French filmmaker Gance used three synchronised projectors and three screens for the Polyvision finale.
The last and final hack is something you already possess, or you don’t. And if you don’t, it means you haven’t had the great fortune of calling America, the good ol’ US of A, home. And in particular, that gem of possibilities that is NYC — in Coppola’s film called much more fittingly New Rome instead of New York. Because NYC has always felt like a metropolis out of an empire, with an army made up of artists and visionaries instead of soldiers. Megalopolis is about the country we know America could be, if only our politicians on both sides disappeared and allowed a utopia of artists and filmmakers to run our society. It is also about imagining a future that is better than our past, not more grim, despite all the mistakes that have been made. That’s what Cesar dreams of, a megalopolis which could help mankind, and not one that tries to destroy him and her. His vision changes, Cesar’s, because he finds the love of his life and he has a child and suddenly the world isn’t for him alone, it belongs to the future generations. It’s all so perfectly romantic that I’m getting emotional just writing this down.
Kudos to all the actors, including Driver’s tour de force as a flawed man with a vision and Coppola as a young man alter ego of course. But also Shia LaBeouf, whose sexually fluid Clodio is simply phenomenal, drags and all. And Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Giancarlo Esposito, Talia Shire, James Remar, and D.B. Sweeney, along with Nathalie Emmanuel, Dustin Hoffman and Aubrey Plaza.
I could write another thousand paragraphs about this film, but won’t bore you. I’ll leave you with how Coppola explains himself in his production notes, which created the deep connection I feel with the film. Although filmed in Atlanta, Georgia, this is really about the NYC we know and love, despite its endless issues.
“The story would take place in a somewhat stylized New York City, portrayed as the center of the power of the world, and Cicero would be the mayor during a time of great financial upheaval, such as the financial crisis under former Mayor Dinkins. Cesar, in turn, would be a master builder, a great architect, designer, and scientist combining elements of Robert Moses as portrayed in the brilliant biography The Power Broker, with architects like Frank Lloyd Wright, Raymond Loewy, Norman Bel Geddes, or Walter Gropius.
Step by step with these beginnings, I researched New York City’s most interesting cases from my scrapbooks: the Claude Von Bulow murder case, the Mary Cunningham/James Agee Bendix scandal, the emergence of Maria Bartiromo (a beautiful financial reporter nicknamed ‘The Money Honey’ coming from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange), the antics of Studio 54, and the city’s financial crisis itself (saved by Felix Rohatyn), so that everything in my story would be true and did happen either in modern New York or in Ancient Rome.”
I’ll admit that every minute of every hour since watching Megalopolis, I’ve been thinking about it and/or talking about it. Just this morning, as I ran into one of the publicists for the film, we talked about Driver being able to make time stand still by saying “time, stop!” The film opens with that haunting idea and it’s not such a stretch from reality, if you’re a filmmaker. Because filmmakers, in their edit rooms, make time stop constantly — go back, redo, undo, cut and paste and move forward. They play with the likenesses of their actors, like puppet masters with their puppets.
And I also felt I should add this part in, in case you haven’t figured it out already. Cesar is Coppola, but also perhaps his son, Roman (wow, that only just came to me, as in inhabitant of Rome) who helped on the script for the film. Everything is personal in Megalopolis, down to the last detail. Remember that, it’s your hack for watching Coppola’s epic opus and walking away from it exhilarated. There, I’ll stop now, before I turn this piece into one the length of War and Peace.
Ultimately, the film ends with a song that provides a roadmap to its message. Listen to it, I’ve embedded the track above, get in the mood, find a friend or lover with whom you wish to share the most intimate film you’ll ever watch, and keep your fingers crossed that the distributors near you will read this piece and others like it, and not those written by the haters, and buy this masterpiece.
In case you were still wondering, Megalopolis is not to be missed.
Top image courtesy of American Zoetrope and the Festival de Cannes, used with permission.