If his uncle, the wealthy Crassus (Jon Voight), at the head of the bank of the same name, is ready to support his crazy project, his cousin Clodio (Shia LaBeouf) is determined to put obstacles in his way. A jet-setter accustomed to celebrity magazines, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), Cicero’s daughter, is intrigued by this dreamer, with whom she quickly falls in love…
An old sea serpent
Last May, the 77th Cannes Film Festival rolled out the red carpet for Francis Ford Coppola to unveil Megalopolisthe culmination of a dream more than 40 years old for the 86-year-old American filmmaker. Without a third Palme d’Or up for grabs (after those won for Secret conversation in 1974 and Apocalypse Now in 1979).
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Dedicated to his wife Eleanor, who died earlier this year, Megalopolis is a project that Coppola has been talking about since the early 1980s. At the time when his friend George Lucas was triumphant with Star Warsthe director of Godfather also wanted to try his hand at science fiction. This idea never really left him. He also admitted to having agreed to produce Dracula (1993), Jack (1996) et The Idealist (1997) to be able to finance this extraordinary project. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001 – difficult, in this context, to imagine a new utopia for New York – Coppola finally abandoned the project in 2007.
“Megalopolis”, this scenario that haunts Coppola: “I am approaching the goal for the first time”
In 2019, the production of Megalopolis is relaunched and Coppola does not hesitate to put in his own pocket, to complete a budget estimated at around 100 million dollars. The film will finally be shot between November 2022 and 2023 in epic conditions, the director having fired a large part of his team: the decoration manager, the artistic director and the head of visual effects. This is evident from the final result.
A bloated film
Old sea serpent from the history of cinema, Megalopolis perhaps should never have come to the surface. Based on real estate shenanigans, the film’s plot seems stuck in 1980s New York and the rise of real estate mogul Donald Trump. While the parallel between the fall of the Roman Empire and that of contemporary America is so transparent that it loses all evocative force.
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In addition to its kitsch peplum side taking place in a retro-futuristic New York, Megalopolis is a film bloated by its pretension, filled with philosophical quotations, Latin expressions and grandiloquent dialogues, which even the brilliant Adam Driver has difficulty delivering… Faced with these great truths delivered like flashes of brilliance, while he does not often acts only with platitudes, we think of Terrence Malick from Tree of Life orTo the wonder… While the hero, this providential man surrounded by women swooning over his genius, seems to come from another era.
Coppola, the stylist
Basically indigestible, Megalopolis is a little less so in terms of form. Coppola remained a great stylist and produced some very beautiful sequences, particularly the most experimental. But will he be able to find his audience? With its astronomical budget for an independent production, the film will undoubtedly have difficulty attracting the interest of distributors – in the United States, no studio has in any case taken the risk.
Megalopolis is indeed a strange blockbuster, whose absence of action scenes will undoubtedly chill the general public and whose verbiage will hardly enchant moviegoers. Perhaps the old director should have kept his vines…
Megalopolis Science-fiction Screenplay and direction Francis Ford Coppola Photography Mihai Malaimare Jr. Musique Osvaldo Golijov et Grace VanderWaal Montage Cam McLauchlin et Glen Scantlebury With Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel, Giancarlo Esposito, Audrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Jason Schwartzman, Talia Shire, Dustin Hoffman… Duration 2h18
