A look at the making of 'Megalopolis'

   Francis Ford Coppola invited director Mike Figgis to chronicle the making of Coppola’s ambitious Megalopolis, a film that had been percolating in Coppola’s mind for 30 years. Whether you saw Magalopolis as an explosion of visual genius or an inscrutable mess, Figgis’s Megadoc makes for an intriguing foray into the mind and personality of a director whose ambitions operate on a grand scale. 

 For Coppola, movies are a canvas on which to realize individual dreams. An artist who has directed some of cinema’s greatest narrative-driven films (The Godfather and The Godfather II), Coppola nonetheless views himself as an experimental artist who has never entirely forsaken his theater background.

    So it’s hardly surprising to see Coppola rehearsing his actors with a series of games that look as if they were left over from an acting class. Figgis also shows Coppola going against trendy grains, preferring practical effects to computer-generated imagery.

    Oh, and by the way, Coppola spent $120 million of his own money to finance Megalopolis, selling off a portion of his wine business to raise the funds. 

     If nothing else, Coppola is a romantic when it comes to art. What would matter if he died broke if his spending resulted in something beautiful?

     Interviews with Jon Voight and Shia LaBeouf show how different actors respond to Coppola’s approach. It’s hardly surprising that Coppola occasionally expresses his irritations with LaBeouf, who can’t get in synch with Coppola’s methods.

      Coppola presides over a massive production, often seen sitting in a chair, an emperor who understands that some may think he's encouraging chaos. He assures us that he’s looking for meaningful moments within a fluid atmosphere many directors wouldn’t tolerate. 

       A couple of comments in Megadoc tell us something about Coppola’s sense of himself and his work. At one point, he says (wrongly, I think) that he’s a “second-rate director.” He quickly revises the statement to say that he’s a “first-rate second-rate director.” In another telling scene, he encourages his actors and himself to put themselves at greater risk.

      Because movies require many varied talents, putting a singular vision on screen is no simple matter, something Coppola’s late wife, Eleanor Coppola, documented in her 1991 work, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse. Eleanor Coppola makes a set visit during the film, some of which takes place in a hotel Coppola bought so that he could create a tightly knit community.

         Eighty three at the time of the filming, Coppola seems a mellowed visionary who has spent much of his life trying to create the ideal conditions for making cinematic art; i.e., ensuring that, as one interviewee puts it, no one can say “no” to him.

         Of course, bumps in the road still appear. At one point, Coppola fires and replaces the film's visual effects supervisor. He can’t always hide his frustration. 

         Megalopolis struck me as a mixture of brilliance and incoherence fused with a call for a global conversation about the future of humanity. Some day, I’ll watch it again and check my initial reactions because I’m an admirer of Coppola and always remain hopeful about his work. 

         If you share that sentiment, you’ll be interested in watching an 83-year-old man take a shot fulfilling a life-long dream that might have been a culminating work, a glorious merging of all of his talents.

       That may not have happened, but Megadoc proves a fascinating look at the effort.

 

'Quartet' plays nice -- too nice

Quartet is noteworthy for being Dustin Hoffman's directorial debut. Little else about the movie deserves pressing into one's book of cinema memories. Treating its aging characters as colorfully humorous, Quartet puts its mountain of cliches into the hands of a collection of British actors who earn respect simply by showing up. The movie takes place in an estate-like home for aging musicians as they prepare for a fund-raising gala that (yes) is needed to save the institution from bankruptcy. Faint ripples of drama emerge when Maggie Smith's Jean Horton shows up, much to the consternation of her ex-husband Reginald Paget (Tom Courtenay), another of the home's residents. Reginald never has forgiven Jean for a long-ago dalliance. Moments of sentiment bump up against the movie's comic core. The screenplay by Ronald Harwood, who adapted his own play, specializes in broadly drawn characters. Michael Gambon is the imperious impresario who's trying to pull the gala together; Pauline Collins plays the addled, memory-challenged Cissy; and Billy Connolly portrays the obligatory dirty old man. It's difficult to argue with the abilities of a cast of established veterans. But the movie's poignant moments veer toward the maudlin, and there's not a lot of drama in wondering whether Smith and Courtenay will reach some sort of rapprochement or whether four singers can be put together to perform a quartet from Rigoletto. Smith, in fine form, plays a reluctant diva; Jean must be persuaded to participate in the quartet. For all the fuss about the gala, it looks far too modest to support the estate and grounds where most of the movie takes place. A scene in which Courtenay's character lectures to a group of rap-oriented youngsters about the glories of opera seems neutered of any bite. And a movie about serious music surely could have done better than Dario Marianelli's warm bath of a score. Oh well, perhaps it's fitting accompaniment for such a middle-brow massage of a movie.

'Barney's Version' needed more bite

Giamatti's in peak form, but he can't bring this adaptation of a Mordecai Richler novel fully to life. fully to life.

Barney's Version, the late Mordecai Richler's final novel, has been brought to the screen with Paul Giamatti in the title role, a seemingly perfect match between player and character. Avid and hungry, Barney travels from the faux Bohemianism of youth to the well-established affluence of middle age, supporting his excesses from success as a producer of a crappy but popular sitcom in Montreal.

Giamatti does Barney justice. He captures Barney's boundless skepticism, filtering it through the dawning realizations of a man who thinks he may have wasted his life. Giamatti understands Barney’s competitiveness, as well as his capacity for vindictive sarcasm. Barney is a man who can turn an inadvertent slight into a grudge match.

Of course, Barney drinks too much. Of course, he spends too many evenings planted on bar stools watching his beloved Montreal Canadians. Of course, he’s perpetually resentful.

Unfortunately, Giamatti’s performance can’t quite keep the movie from looking like an imitation of Richler’s novel rather than a full-bodied drama. On screen, Barney’s Version feels sketchy and episodic, a story in search of something to say.

The movie's title suggests a problem that surely would have confronted any filmmaker trying to adapt Richler's acerbic and very funny novel. Barney's Version was written in the first person. Mired in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, the always cynical Barney Panofsky reviews a life in which he made bundles of money, married three women, and, at one point, was suspected of murdering his best and most admired friend.

All of that worked well in a novel of caustic density. But director Richard J. Lewis can’t find a dramatic equivalent for the tug and bite of Richler's prose, which gave full vent to Barney’s every prejudice. What we get here is not Barney's version of events, but an outsider's view of Barney.

Barney, as someone in the novel says of him, is a collector of grievances. He also treats his impulses as if they were virtues. What else can be said of a guy who decides to fall in love with a stranger during his own wedding reception? Clearly, Barney is not afraid to court disaster. Maybe he even craves it.

Like Philip Roth, Richler, who died in 2001, sometimes found himself at odds with the Jewish community, perhaps because he seldom saw his characters through veils of sentimentality. He had a feeling for rough-and-tumble Jews who weren’t afraid of a fight, smart guys who didn’t always know how to get out of their own way.

On screen, though, some of Richler’s characters come off as caricatures. Barney's second wife (Minnie Driver), for example, is too much a spoiled brat of Montreal’s Jewish upper crust.

The pragmatic Panofsky men – particularly Barney’s father --stand in opposition to the privileged Jewish world that gave birth to Driver’s character. Dustin Hoffman, who's becoming a master of small roles, plays Izzy Panofsky, a retired Montreal detective of happily crude temperament. (A familial note: Hoffman's son Jake turns up late in the movie; he plays Barney's son.) Izzy may not be the world’s most self-aware person, but that’s precisely what makes him tolerable. He’s unashamed.

Barney's life revolves around three women: his first wife (Rachelle Lefevre) is a sexually advanced, free wheeling painter Barney meets as a young man during a period when he’s hanging around with artist and writer friends in Rome. (In the novel, this interlude takes place in Paris). Barney’s second wife (Driver) represents the life Barney’s supposed to lead. Lower middle class kid marries money, does all right for himself, improves his standing.

The love of Barney’s life, played by the beautiful and sophisticated British actress Rosamund Pike, seems detached from the class distinctions that ripple through Montreal’s Jewish community. Like most of the women in the movie, Pike’s Miriam never seems fully realized. She becomes Barney’s third wife.

Throughout the story, Barney tries to maintain his friendship with his dissolute but brilliant pal Boogie Moscovitch (Scott Speedman), a promising young writer whose life increasingly is dominated by drugs and alcohol. Even at his worst, Boogie never entirely surrenders the air of superiority that both attracts and repels Barney.

During the course of the movie, Barney's youth gives way to age. His life is tarnished by error, the onset of Alzheimer's, and the dissolution of his marriage to Miriam, thanks to a night of infidelity.

Marital disaster probably loomed anyway; Miriam already had begun to express a desire for self-realization, seeking to return to her pre-marital career as an NPR-style radio interviewer. She's supported in this ambition by a vegan producer (Bruce Greenwood), a man Barney immediately and thoroughly detests. And, yes, this part of the movie feels clichéd, a gesture toward passing time and trends, not unlike the long hair the characters sport in the movie’s Rome segments.

Some of Lewis’ scenes are vibrant and alive, and his movie stands as an often-interesting look at a man with enough appreciation of irony to name his production company, Totally Unnecessary Productions.

For all it gets right, Barney’s Version misses much of Richler's invaluable raucousness and rancor. It’s Barney’s story, but with a little too much of the bite removed from the incessant musings of an old dog who probably thinks he never really had his day.

Get the 'Fockers' out of here

It's difficult to imagine anyone approaching Little Fockers with anything but the lowest expectations. This latest edition to the series that kicked off in 2000 with Meet the Parents meets those low expectations -- and then some. * Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro reprise their roles as antagonistic in-laws in a story that begins when De Niro and Blythe Danner (as the Byrneses) visit their twin grandchildren for a fifth birthday celebration. * Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand (as the parents of Stiller's character) turn up to repeat old jokes; so does Owen Wilson, who plays one of Polo's former suitors. * Jessica Alba signs on as a flirtatious drug rep who asks Stiller's Greg to help sell Sustengo, a Viagra-like drug that leads to the expected (and predictably lame) joke about a long-lasting erection. * Harvey Keitel, who long ago starred with De Niro in Mean Streets, has a cameo role as a contractor who's working on a house that the Fockers are renovating. His presence serves only to remind us that just about everyone involved with this Focking mess might have made better use of their talents. * Whether little or big, the Fockers have worn out their welcome.