The return with great fanfare of the master Francis Ford Coppola with his debut in Cannes has sparked mixed reviews to say the least. Still fresh from its preview, the imposing science fiction vision of a metropolis between New York and ancient Rome – where the idealism of an architect who intends to rebuild it after the disaster must clash with the ambitions of a fundamentalist mayor – manifests the will of the director to compare the present with the past, drawing parallels and readings capable of observing our time more deeply.
This emerged from the filmmaker during his appearance on the Croisette: «When years ago I said that I wanted to tell a Roman epic set in America, they asked me why. I explained that the USA was born from the model of the Roman republic. From it they borrowed the idea of an egalitarian society and immense buildings. The parallelism between the United States of today and ancient Rome is visible everywhere and the role of the artist is central because he places emphasis on these aspects.”
By concerting a cast of absolute excellence, which brings together personalities of the caliber of Adam Driver, Shia LaBeouf, Giancarlo Esposito, Laurence Fishburne and Dustin Hoffman, Coppola has established a constructive comparison between different cinematographic generations, where each has given their contribution with the maximum of participation: «This film was born from a collaboration, we made it together. Cinema is a collective art, alone I wouldn’t have known where to put my hands. In addition to providing a beautiful performance, Adam Driver made great contributions to the editing. Each of them went beyond their duties, contributing generously.”
Even with seven minutes of applause at the end of the screening, “Megalopolis” initially received just 28% positive ratings on the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, and later reached 50% approval. On the other hand, Adam Driver himself labeled the film as “indefinable”, associating himself with the comment of actress Aubrey Plaza who expressed herself by calling it “a wonderful nightmare”. Some critical comments would even consider the title “an unbearable mess” and “the mad work of an ambitious madman”. These are associated with many other feedback from the specialized press, such as that of Bilge Ebiri of the online magazine Vulture who defined the film as “the craziest thing I’ve ever seen”. Matt Neglia instead spoke of a “mega failure” due to the characters who seem lost between involuntarily hilarious jokes, in an absurd and incoherent result. The impressions of Kyle Buchanan of the New York Times are equally lukewarm, especially given the state of confusion caused by the different acting styles of the performers and their unlikely dialogues.
Despite the inevitable rifts that followed – also due to the problems encountered during filming but above all due to the atypical and subversive nature of the title – Coppola openly admits that he did not regret investing his own money in the project and indeed, this would have allowed him not to submit to the studios’ obligations. When asked about the 120 million he spent out of his own pocket to make the film, the director stated: «I included risk in the film. I have no problems with finances. My children, without exception, have wonderful careers. They don’t need a fortune. That’s how I felt the film should be, so I decided to finance it myself…. There are many people who when they die say: I wish I had done it. When I die, I will say: I did it.”
And the filmmaker’s future leaves no room for doubt, declaring that he does not want to retire from the world of cinema at all and with still a lot of work in sight for the near future: «I can assure you that I intend to still be here in 20 years. I’ve already started writing a new film.”
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