Last Wednesday, Francis Ford Coppola’s latest major project was released. The film caused a stir: while some moviegoers called it genius, others found it horrible. You’ll have to go see him to form your own opinion!
Megalopolis made a thunderous exit, but perhaps not for the right reasons. Rated 5/10 on Senscritique, the film strongly divided the public. The blockbuster by Francis Ford Coppola (director of the trilogy The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, Dracula…) offers a trip to a hybrid megalopolis between imperial Rome and decadent North America. The main character, Caesar, played by Adam Driver, is an avant-garde architect who is trying to transform New Rome into a true utopia.
A polarized audience: some see it as a masterpiece
Coppola took 120 million out of his own pocket to realize all his craziest ideas for this project that has been driving him for 40 years. Following a private viewing session in Los Angeles, Coppola decided to condense the feature film, which was almost 3 hours long, into a little over 2 hours. After this private broadcast and the Cannes festival, critics recognize that Megalopolis is an ambitious artistic proposition. But at the same time we fear that the film will have difficulty being received by the general public. However, the figure of Adam Driver, who notably played Kylo Ren in the films Star Wars from Disney, could well arouse the curiosity of more than one spectator.
Francis Ford Coppola has fun, but loses his audience, as the project turns out to be personal (megalomaniac), while dealing with universal, ideological, political, social and societal subjects. – Critique France Culture.
It makes or breaks
We have no feeling of witnessing this object matured for forty years. On the contrary, this new style is assumed without any restraint, above all not aiming for mastery. – Criticism following a broadcast at Cannes
What often comes up in reviews is this impression of too much. Some point out that Coppola wanted to include so many things that the mixture seems indigestible. It is particularly a question of the genre mix between epic and grandiose style (in its costumes and sets) and a retro-futuristic style. In short, opinions, both positive and negative, agree that the film is unclassifiable.
Visually, the film has no unity: the daytime scenes have a flashy, not opulent, appearance that makes you feel “broke” despite the budget, while the nighttime sequences seem to come from a different film.” – Criticism of Duty
We also find this mixture in the themes he addresses. Megalopolis seems to want to tell many things: both a romance between César and Julia (played by Nathalie Emmanuelle), but it is also about issues of political power and the question of interactions between technologies and men.. Part of the public sees it as a “whim” on the part of the Italian-American director as he tries to convey his extrapolated perception of American capitalist society.
Also, recent accusations against Coppola could well detract from the number of entries for his feature. This is the magazine Variety which reports the information: the director allegedly exhibited inappropriate behavior towards actresses on his film sets. Serious accusations which will not help the reputation of the feature film which is already an oven at the box office.
