All roads lead to New Rome in the maestro’s film, a cinematic dinguerie. “A political and social fable, a chaotic fresco and a mad sci-fi epic.
Before the premiere screening of his latest film, “Megalopolis” (out September 25), the audience at the Deauville American Film Festival gave Francis Ford Coppola, the legendary director of “Apocalypse Now”, “The Godfather”, “Secret Conversation”, “Dracula”, “Cotton Club”…, a standing ovation. who, moved, evoked his budding affair in Normandy with Eleanor, who later became his wife and collaborator, and to whom the film is dedicated.
It’s a young man’s cinema that the “maestro” has shot, an old man (85) who walks with a cane; a cinematic dinguerie, a psychedelic whirlwind, the kind we’d like to see young filmmakers making. Selected in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, “Megalopolis” is “the project of a lifetime”. Conceived four decades ago, the film was almost made in 2001, but abandoned after the September 11th attacks in New York. To revive the project a few years ago, Coppola sold part of his Napa Valley vineyard in California to finance the ambitious $120 million project.
The dream of a new world
All roads lead to New Rome, the capital of an American republic of the future, which bears a striking resemblance to ancient Rome in the throes of decadence. The city is bankrupt, run by Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), a schemer, reactionary and corrupt defender of a privileged caste. His pretty daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), previously a frivolous party girl, falls in love with her father’s best enemy, Caesar Catilina (Adam Driver). A brilliant architect and scientist, an idealistic creator with the power to stop time, a visionary builder who dreams of a new world, a new society. A utopia, while the people are suffering, persuaded by the propaganda of an ambitious populist, Clodio.
“Megalopolis” is a politico-social ‘fable’, a chaotic fresco and a mad sci-fi epic, shot by Coppola with the ‘invaluable collaboration’ of his son Roman, and a prestigious cast of supporting actors (Dustin Hoffman, John Voight, Shia LaBeouf, Laurence Fishburne, Jason Schwartzman…).
A retro-futuristic universe
And indeed, there’s something a little megalomaniacal and over-the-top about this pompous, lavish opera, with its profusion of characters and sprawling script. But all the “illusion” of cinema plunges us into a universe with a retro-futuristic aesthetic, a “poetic reality” imagined by visual designer Dean Sherriff, charged with drawing Coppola’s visions.
It’s a work of unbridled inventiveness, such as this happening at the Deauville screening: during a press conference sequence, as if taken from the film, an actor enters the stage with a microphone, playing “live” to the audience a journalist who asks a question, which Caesar/Driver answers on screen!
Francis Ford Coppola assures us that “Megalopolis”, a film filled with philosophy, mythology, history and architecture, is a “very optimistic film”, as if he still has hope in humanity… and in cinema.
Patrick TARDIT
“Megalopolis”, a film by Francis Ford Coppola (out September 25).
