Francis Ford Coppola’s MEGAOPOLIS raises Film/Cinema to the realm of faith and religion. It screens as a paean to hope.
In this passion project, the 5 time Oscar winning Coppola has become a homilist, employing the director’s art and scope to leave the world a fable that embeds a vision into popular culture.
Yes it is a “box office flop” however little that means. In the work of an auteur money is crass way of measuring art, or religion. Commercial success is one of those pernicious harpy evils that flutter around in the MEGAOPOLIS.
There is not one moment of tedium in the 2 hours and 18 minutes of epic visuals, sensual and intellectual deluge and deft exploration of human nature.
After a life of film-making and story-telling Coppola combines the skills and tricks with such mastery as to leave a work of art that might even be a foundational piece of a belief system. MEGAOPOLIS was not designed by Hollywood studios to be a blockbuster. It is Coppola’s personal creation and it comes as a kind marker to the human race.
This is an extraordinary film, while it is also a 21st Century code of sorts. It’s my hunch recognition for the film is years away. MEGAOPOLIS will have a following, and it will be regarded as a kind of sociological and political “holiness,” but it is so loaded and charged, that at a time when humankind is distracted and less capable of deep thinking, it will be missed my many or not fully understood. It is a rolling codex of human values and an inventory of the function and abuse of empire and control in everything from sexual behavior to corrupt power states. Undermining evidence of anything noble is the seductive presence of desire for money.
Rabbi-Father-Reverend Coppola preaches a kind of timeless story, part messiah adventure, part creative obsession, wanting to replicate and improve the perfection of creation itself, and populates it with all the old runes, riddles, and revolutions of history. Brilliant faux Shakespearean Roman Empire, and a searing lens on modern America but it’s not a popcorn film. It’s a phantasmagoric PhD analysis in human social structure and ways.
In addition to five Academy awards, the old master has six Golden globes and two Palme’s d’Ors. He can wrap a topic nicely that one can just take a helluva ride through a morality tale that fuses the fall of the Rome with the continuum of human abuse including our present political war in America. There is a lot about how politics and money are in bed together. There are pieces about mores, morality, media and motherhood that could keep a college professor occupied teaching several semesters.
The Coppola Gospel is literally imprinted as interstitial headers, done with reverence. The top layer of story arc is a grand sweep. The acting is superb, befitting a holy melodrama directed by a legendary story teller. If one could only take it in as a movie, but this is Coppola; a self -financed, passion poem, maybe his valedictory.
I told Lana I want to see it a few more times, just to get everything.
50 years on film scholars, will marvel at it. Philosophers, ethicists, sociologists and folklore scholars may study it as one arts all time best "good vs evil" tales. It is about a fall and way back to the garden.
Though they are forces that bring the fable to life, the actors seem secondary to Coppola’s sermon. Plenty of masterful work led by Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel. One critic said It well when they wrote that Aubry Plaza goes for broke as the sexual power woman “Wow Platinum.” Giancarlo Esposito and John Voight are excellent. Laurence Fishburne is a major reason the Coppola litany works. Dustin Hoffman does a nice cameo and there is a family connection with Talia Shire and nephew Jason Schwartzman.
Have a look at it, but expect something more than just a movie. When one of the most influential film makers, spends as much as he did, to tell a story crafted over 40 years, we should pay attention.
See you down the trail
