Megalopolis (2024)

Megalopolis-(2024)
Megalopolis (2024)

In Megalopolis, there is Francis Ford Coppola, a Titan of Cinema, allowing himself to reflect on Roman History, US History, Political Rivalry and Cooperation, Urban Planning, Technology, Love, Marriage, etc. in its purest form.

Megalopolis, however, is a work by Francis Ford Coppola, who has also directed this film. At Alamo Drafthouse Boston and other cinemas across New England.

Adam Driver portrays the role of Cesar Catilina in Megalopolis.

This is likely to be quite a difficult review for me because up until now, I have not seen Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis.

Of course, I have been wearing it for some time. But I have not looked at it. As I have watched it just once.

To be honest with ourselves, we all knew that Miller would not be able to satisfy the expectations of ‘Megalopolis’ and ‘Dune’ in the same manner. I feel the same way about Megalopolis as I have always felt about all of Kubrick’s movies after Barry Lyndon. You see… it was only after Kubrick’s brother-in-law Jan Harlan became sole producer of all of Kubrick’s movies, that Kubrick films were produced how he wanted them to be produced. Kubrick’s films after Barry Lyndon ceased to be masterpieces for me, they were just acts of self-indulgence by their author – or at least so I thought. Those first few experiences were Kubrick the Titan struggling to transform cinematic art, and my dissatisfaction and detachment was my filmgoer mind lagging behind the rewiring of my neural meshes that took place for the movies after Barry Lyndon to Barries Lyndon. There are certain Michael Haneke films like Cache and The White Ribbon which have left me with similar experiences.

Megalopolis is a passion project by the acclaimed film director, Francis Ford Coppola. This film unlocks a myriad of issues, including the conflict and collaboration between Rome and the USA, urban America and its politics, and the integration of technology in architecture, love, and marriage, among many others. This film is over 40 years in the making, and it is derived from his finances a total of 120 million to make it. The film has really disoriented my collective human perceptive abilities in a setting I have not yet understood. I may even have a negative view of it after watching it. However, I left the theater that night only the way I felt when I watched the premiere of 70-millimeter apocalyptic shots of ‘Megalopolis’ for the first time, head still in a haze from the intensity of the experience.

Now, I will have to watch it again however, this time is more interesting as I expect my brain to process it differently than it initially did.

Megalopolis is a uniquely American construct; the dystopic Manhattan of the film is a biting commentary on today’s United States, echoing the sentiments of an embattled Rome just prior to the fall of the Republic. Adam Driver plays the role of Cesar Catilina, an urbanist who is simultaneously conceived as a combination of Julius Caesar, the Roman conspirator Catiline and possibly Robert Moses. As an added bonus, a hint of Preston Tucker (the subject of the biopic produced by Coppland, Tucker: the Man and His Dream) will be added to an innovator Superman that will leave fans of Ayn Rand twitches in their John Galt Underoos at night making nighttime Fountainhead covers. Catilina was awarded a Nobel Prize because he is the creator of the building material “megalon,” of which there is an unexplained link to Catilina’s deceased spouse. What is a megalon, you ask? The plot demands it to do so in all circumstances, what however seems to be the most relevant is its use in building self-sustaining cities that would expand as the population in them increases.

Oh, and Catilina has another superpower that should have any of the Flash’s villains green with envy; he has the ability to stop time at his command.

With plans for the Megalopolis development looming over his head, Catilina is adamant to use his megalon to wipe out entire affordable and multi-ethnic neighborhoods. Standing against him is Giancarlo Esposito as Mayor Cicero whose approach can only be described as more conservative towards… well… allowing people to have homes.

Naturally, there is the gorgeous daughter of Cicero named Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) whose loyalties get tested as she is torn between Catilina and her father. Ready go, soap opera organ.

Megalopolis is a film which oozes wealth and affluence… there are textures, hues, and compositions that can rival the most opulent Renaissance art. The difficulty arises, as it does, especially, in the early metafiction-like, postmodern butterfly segments of the narrative, in the very fact, that Coppola himself has no faith in the artist’s own artistry in the potency embedded in the uva of this level of opulence. This illusion is interrupted by a series of medium montages that bear the mark of excessive rapidity: the beauty, the calmness, the stillness – the viewers have no chance to be engaged in any process of adjustment, any process of location. It is ludicrous to try and force a story while repeating the same details with gusto into the ears of viewers through voiceovers and newscasts, especially considering the understated sophistication of the film’s aesthetics. There is at least one major character that goes chronologically: the narrator of the film, who in fact actually just disappears for rather too long a period. All these are hints that make me think that, like Apocalypse Now, it’s likely we’re going to have different versions of Megalopolis in the years to come.

Megalopolis has many traces of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. We have a struggle with the order between the Have’s and Have Nots with the major focus on the urban order and resources. Also, when it comes to the reactionary elements that do not accept the progress of the era, it’s equally true there is much of H. G. Welles’s Things to Come here. But, in comparison with Megalopolis those two science fiction metaphors are rather tired and superficial. As far as the film Megalopolis is concerned, it is a reaction unblemished in the number of plots, mise en scene, and characters. Coppola does not even walk, he stumbles over. Lucky for us it is mesmerizing to witness, like how stunning it is to watch Nijinsky trying to stand in a split. Similar to Apocalypse Now, Coppola is shooting a movie about action and somebody acting like God, while being busy performing the same role himself. It is quite respectable to have this degree of control… except, perhaps, he has none.

Nonetheless, Whenever Coppola goes for a solution, the sky is truly the limit. There’s an Urban of Purgatory of Injustice sequence which is one of the most beautiful that I have come across in a long time.

It is impossible not to witness the masterpiece of megalopolis created by Coppola over a period of four decades when the lens fire between January 6th and January 12th, some apocalyptic images of celestial bodies exploding intermixed with ground zero metaphors which both defy description whilst paradoxically being both very powerful and forgettable. Post-modern Coliseum pompously describes the structural void of the film, open ended masterpiece takes literally four decades to make, there is no real end, and everything is potentially perfect transcendence, or simply close yet distinctly incomplete. Ah, yet as I mentioned earlier, perhaps what is not finished, is my own understanding of this genesis and as I believe rightfully so, headed back to be one of the largest endeavors in filmmaking ever undertaken and one of the most painfully eloquent narratives of monstrousness to exist combined together with the art of megalomania. Left to the viewer’s imagination determines how colossal one director’s vision has to be, incorporating houses of legacies within the workings of urban planning and design. The story is centered around massive sprawling architectural achievements, but in a time when the United States was rammed with mess toward sensibilities of a thought as controlled through a mess of looming buildings

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