Megalopolis

You can see every cent on the screen. That's the good thing about Francis Ford Coppola's latest and quite possibly last movie. Between the cast, the costuming, and the set design, which reimagines New York City as New Rome, you can see it all. The only question this raises is why was 42nd Street from Third Avenue to Times Square left unaffected, and what about the movie theaters from 7th to 8th Avenue?

That said, it is natural to be skeptical of what is essentially an admiring biopic of Robert Moses. Especially when it has apparently been written by Ayn Rand as a reply to METROPOLIS and then handed to Abel Gance after convincing him he's making a movie about Julius Caesar instead of Napoleon. And don't forget the quotations from Marcus Aurelius.

It is, in sum, a very learned movie. To appreciate the details, you need to have read extensively in Roman history, seen a lot of silent films, and be familiar with New York City in the second half of the 20th Century, including the flight of the middle and upper classes from the 1950s through the 1980s. Through the vagaries of my upbringing and a chaotic course of self-education, I can claim those things. So. What do I think?

The performances are fine. However, I am left with the question, as I am about so many movies these days, of who Coppola made this movie for. It is claimed he spent about $140 million of his own money on this feature. The general rule is that a movie has to gross about twice its production cost to break even. I can't see a large enough audience for this to produce $300,000,000 in tickets and secondary rights. It is simply too long, a shaggy dog story about love and artistic vision being more important than anything else.

This would not, of course, be the first time that Coppola has let his artistic ambitions explode on him; even though it is claimed APOCALYPSE NOW eventually made its money back, I have my doubts about that if you add in interest costs. Certainly ONE FROM THE HEART was a disaster, and he spent a couple of decades making nicely commercial movies from other sources to dig his way out, and let the wineries and restaurants make him money. Neither do I believe this movie will ruin him. There are certainly enough movies buffs around to make the net loss from this bearable.

All of which goes a long way to answering my question of who Coppola's intended audience was. It was Coppola himself, an attempt to prove himself the complete film maker, instead of the fine translator of others' well told tales. I hope he likes what he has wrought.

It's the huge go for broke swing everyone said it was, and an immensely interesting mess. For everything that works in Megalopolis, there's something that doesn't. Parts are very creative and unlike anything else, and then long stretches pass that are utterly boring. It's 138 minutes long but feels like it exceeds the three-hour mark. Whether that makes it feel appropriately epic or too often dull will probably depend on the viewer.

It's also the kind of movie where I'm not sure overanalysing will help. Coppola is trying to say so much in one film, and a good part of it comes out nonsensical as a result. There were a few points during the film where I wondered if it was all some practical joke. It might mean a lot to him, or maybe only parts do and the rest of the time, he's laughing at us.

Somehow, all at once, I'm disappointed, exhausted, confused, and impressed. There's a certain balance here with the entertaining and boring. Visuals that look striking alongside parts that are visually garish. It's a movie that film buffs will argue about and remember while 99% of the population will continue to live their lives in blissful ignorance of its existence.

I can't quite decide whether it would be better to have be among the blissful many or the baffled 1%. I can offer no advice to anyone else who's considering giving it 138 minutes of their finite time. I'm glad I saw it and I also feel it was a bit of a waste of time.

The cinematography was a spectacle for sure. The special effects however, were either a strong compliment to the shot sequences or embarrassing to look at. I did enjoy the films dream aesthetic, but the dialogue was either cartoonishly hard to keep up with or felt like it served no purpose for the plot/characters.

My favorite part of the film was definitely the Virgin Pledge sequence. It also did nothing for the story, however, the song was actually good and the visual delivery was pleasing to the eyeballs.

Overall, this film is definitely not for most people. I am embarrassed that I liked it. It's a terrible movie that I enjoyed for the outlandish performances that gave me a good laugh.

On one hand, this film has some interesting ideas and visuals, but some ideas never evolve, and some visuals don't look good.

It's challenging to understand what Coppola's intention was with this film. It seems like he chose not to focus too much on characters but rather on themes. However, some scenes suggest that the audience should feel empathy for the characters, but one simply can't. One reason for that is the pacing of this film; it somehow manages to be fast, yet feel slow, and that might be because some scenes are dull. If we remove all the misleading character development, we are left with misleading idea development. Megalopolis bombards you with interesting ideas, but because there are quite a few of them, none of them evolves into a solid conclusion. As I already mentioned, it's hard to see where Coppola was going with all of this.

If his intention was to go against the classical narrative structure and challenge viewers with a different type of storytelling, then that didn't work either. Some scenes contain clichés, and the overall structure feels like a mix of 50s to 90s scenery. One interesting thing the movie does frequently is plant a seed that sometimes does not grow-it stays in that scene, and then we move to the next one. This method of storytelling is misleading and confusing for most audiences, and it probably would work better if this technique had a solid foundation throughout the whole film. But it simply does not feel right.

David Lynch once said that you can make any film, any art the way you want, as long as it feels right. His films are stranger and more difficult to understand than Megalopolis, yet when you watch Lynch's work, you don't feel misled-everything feels right, no matter how strange it is. Megalopolis sometimes feels right, sometimes it doesn't.

Megalopolis is a good example of how the director's stylistic touch matters to the look of the movie. The cinematography of this film was done by the same person who shot The Master. Yet this film feels like any expensive commercial shot today-too vivid, too warm, too basic.

I will definitely rewatch this film in the future, all jokes aside. This film has a shtick to it that I didn't quite get the first time watching. Overall, it's a bit sad that this is Coppola's last film, but I'm sure he has no regrets making it. After all, this is the guy who made Apocalypse Now, and I will respect him forever for his contribution to American cinema.

I so desperately wanted to be part of the minority who enjoyed Megalopolis. However, what an abhorrent nightmare; or maybe a fever dream is more accurate. There's no doubt that the actual bundle of ideas that make up Francis Ford Coppola's "masterpiece" are incredibly unique and interesting. The problem is the execution of those ideas and the dialogue that connects them together. I am obsessed with the idea of New Rome and all these quasi Roman characters plotting against each other like a Shakespearean Game of Thrones. But listening to Adam Driver give a quote from Hamlet and then immediately saying "in the clurrrrb" and Jon Voight saying "boner" are just unforgivable. I roughly understand the plot of Megalopolis, but I cannot even begin to fathom why any character does anything they say or do. The amount of talent that was wasted on what has to be one of the most beautiful, visually stunning backdrops, is disrespectfully confusing. With all of that being said, I will probably cause myself to suffer an additional viewing of Megalopolis, just to be sure I'm sure the experience was so exhausting.