“Coppola still has a wicked eye and knows how to light, frame and shoot a brilliant scene that is lush and sumptuous. Visually, this is a feast and almost makes up for sloppy script. It’s a pity there’s so little beneath the surface and silliness on it.“
Con Nats
2 Silly Ciceros
Francis Ford Coppola has made a much anticipated return to film with Megalopolis, which apparently drew a 10 minute standing ovation at Cannes this year.
His name alone has attracted a top class cast with Adam Driver, Jon Voight, Shia Le Boeuf, Dustin Hofmann, Talia Shire and Laurence Fishburne as the narrator and support character.
The plot is complex and tries to draw parallels to the fall of the Roman Empire and Romeo and Juliet and a few other Shakespeare plays. The city is New Rome, Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) is in charge but Caesar Catalina (Adam Driver) is the head of the Department of Design who is planning Megalopolis, a Utopian city of the future. The Mayor is not happy with it due to his intense dislike of Caeser, who was accused of murdering his wife. His daughter, Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel) is a party girl who suddenly falls for Catalina, who is the nephew of Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight) a greedy developer behind Utopia. His son, Claudio (Shia LaBoufe) has aspirations, but not as ambitious as Wow (Aubrey Plaza), his new young wife who was previously a journalist and Ceaser’s mistress or lover. Confused? So was the scriptwriter. So many scenes and characters added nothing and failed to pay off.
Apparently Coppola took an old theatrical approach and improvised a lot of the script with the actors. They would turn up to rehearsals and be surprised by what Francis had in store. It explains a lot of the looseness, sloppiness, resort to tributes and varying styles of dialogue. Hoffman resorted to New York street talk while others tried higher English and all male actors want to do Hamlet, so Adam Driver does his, totally out of context. (Go you!) I felt it was better placed on the editor’s floor or Driver’s showreel than part of the film.
Much of the acting was over the top and flirted between Shakespearean and just shaky. Driver and Emmanuel carried their tricky roles well but others didn’t. LaBoufe was annoying; Plaza was caricature (but she did prepare herself by watching Fox News) and Voight was channelling a Biden debate performance. Dustin Hoffman enjoyed himself and seemed to be laughing at how he could be paid so much for doing so little.
This felt like a Coppola swan song, where he tried his darndest to use very page he’s ever written, every thought he never fully realised, paid tribute to every film he’s ever liked and hired every actor he’s enjoyed working with or wanted to. He has wanted to make a grandiose statement about humanity, and in case you miss it, it’s on a plaque just before the credits. It’s all very excessive.
Coppola still has a wicked eye and knows how to light, frame and shoot a brilliant scene that is lush and sumptuous. Visually, this is a feast and almost makes up for sloppy script. It’s a pity there’s so little beneath the surface and silliness on it.
This is one of the hardest films I’ve had to review. Coppola is one of the greatest film makers of all time. Apocalypse Now and Godfather I and II are amongst all time favourites. (I even enjoyed the much maligned ‘One From The Heart). But this is an example of what happens when there is no limit on budget (it’s produced by Zoetrope, his film company), no limit on script and no one who will tell him he’s reached beyond his own limits, just as Julius Caser once did. This will only add to the great bins of disappointment.
Con Nats, On The Screen
