It was here in Cannes, 45 years ago, where Francis Ford Coppola finally emerged from his desert of making “Apocalypse Now” with a work in progress and the goal in sight. That press conference is immortalized in “Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse,” the entertaining 1991 documentary by Coppola's wife, Eleanor, in which the “Godfather” director is seen declaring: “My film is not a film about Vietnam; is Vietnam.”
It is an almost mythological moment for cinema, encompassing the claim (“Apocalypse Now” would win the Palme d'Or), but also the end of Coppola's great career during the 1970s and the consolidation of a reputation that would haunt him. one of bombast, artistic risk, excess and indulgence.
That's close to where he is now with “Megalopolis,” the wildly ambitious and overcrowded urban epic financed with $120 million of his own money, which had its world premiere tonight at a festival that has been good for the filmmaker.
The first film by Coppola, 85, since his 2011 horror film “Twixt,” “Megalopolis,” a personal obsession of the director since at least the 1980s, invites words like “summary” and “final stone.” . But that doesn't do it any favors (as do some leaked reactions from an early distributor's screening), especially if you're expecting something polished and high-pitched. It may be more productive—at least through these eyes—to see it as casual and impressionistic, closer to Tom Wolfe's “Bonfire of the Vanities,” a playful picture of a conflicted New York City divided by money, power and race.
But don't call it New York (no one does in the movie). It's more of a New Rome, one with its own Chrysler Building, Grand Central Terminal, and Art Deco flourishes, but reframed through an ancient lens (and the stentorian narrative tones of Laurence Fishburne) as a variation on a city in decline.
It will be a point of contention how much insight can actually be gleaned from Coppola's faux-Roman refocusing. The decay in their city still resembles what you'd expect elsewhere, not to mention a touch retrograde: young women writhing and doing drugs in dance clubs (the film ogles a bit), smiling journalists still wearing hats with press cards. padding on the edge.
And if the central confrontation is technically Roman history rethought as an urban science fiction drama (I'll spare you the wormhole of exploring the Catilinarian coup d'état that seems to have obsessed the director for years), we're basically looking at a power. the triangle between Caesar Catiline (Adam Driver, confused in another cryptic visionary role that doesn't suit him), an imperious inventor in the mold of Robert Moses' master builder; Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), the city's embattled, David Dinkins-like mayor; and Cicero's daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), whose loyalties alternate between the two.
“Megalopolis” doesn’t work like “Succession” or a municipal showdown like James Gray’s “The Yards” did; The details of him are too divorced from reality for any of his machinations to be established in a suspenseful manner. Coppola's original script, the product of years of revision and still subject to much improvisation, oscillates maniacally between clumsy dialogue and classic quotes. At one point he was watching Driver deliver the entire “to be or not to be” soliloquy from “Hamlet,” a reference never acknowledged by any of the other characters. As they say, it's a choice.
And although Milena Canonero, Coppola's brilliant, long-time collaborator, is sumptuously dressed in a restrained style (“The Cotton Club,” “Tucker: The Man and His Dream”), the film lacks the confidence of a director of photography that could organize your ideas in a larger format. a classier whole, as the director did with Gordon Willis in the three “Godfather” films. (Here the photograph is by Mihai Mălaimare Jr., a veteran of Paul Thomas Anderson's “The Master,” who is clinging to his life.)
But once you set aside the understandable dream of Coppola returning with another masterpiece, there's a lot to enjoy in “Megalopolis,” especially the cast members, who seize their moments with an abandon that was probably a job requirement. Aubrey Plaza not only plays a character named Wow Platinum, a lecherous interviewer looking to marry someone rich, but she somehow frees herself from any shame by doing so. The spicy notes of Talia Shire and Jon Voight intermingle with the athletic overacting of Shia LaBeouf and Dustin Hoffman.
In a broader sense, Coppola has moved from the cynicism of his best films like “The Conversation” and “Apocalypse Now” – so much power, so corrupting – to something that could fairly be called utopian. I'm not sure if that's what I want from him as an artist, but I'm moved by his unwavering aspiration. He does not come out with something tame and careful, but with a loaded, vigorous and effervescent story about the roots of fascism that only an uncharitable viewer would call a catastrophe. Rather, it feels like a city. It may be the most radical film he has ever made. He dedicates it to her late wife, who would have smiled at the evidence that her husband is still doing his thing 45 years later.
