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.

 

Coppola's long-awaited opus arrives

 

  

An Elvis impersonator. A chariot race. A man who sometimes wears bright red lipstick and dresses. Hamlet's "To Be or Not to Be" soliloquy. Quotes from Marcus Aurelius and Petrarch. The Statue of Liberty, and The Chrysler Building. 

  OK, take a breath.

  I've only mentioned a few of the sights and sounds found in Francis Ford Coppola's extravagant WFT opus, Megalopolis, a movie that makes its themes clear but remains jumbled in other ways.

   I begin this way because Coppola has made an amusing, risible, sometimes exhilarating mess of a movie that either can be accepted as a bold display of cinematic ambition or as a $120 million misfire. 

   Which choice you make or whether you find yourself somewhere in the middle, mostly depends on how you regard Coppola's career and Coppola himself. You never forget there's someone with a vision behind the camera.

   The director of two great American movies (The Godfather and The Godfather Part II) always gets the benefit of my doubt -- up to a point. 

   I reached that point many times during Megalopolis as I wondered what had compelled Coppola, who's now 85, to spend 40 years hoping to make this movie, ultimately financing it with his own money.

   I wish I could say that the answer becomes obvious upon seeing the movie; I'm not sure it does. 

   So what's Megalopolis about? Here's a laundry list of themes: time, creativity, power, hubris, Roman history, urban planning, the role of artists in society,  the fate of the United States, and possibly all of humanity. I'm sure I've omitted something important, but I'll note that in an interview shown before a preview screening, Coppola said that the United States is Rome.

     You can pick that apart while I try to condense a tangled plot. Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) serves as the movie's main character, an ambitious architect with megalomaniacal tendencies and a belief that his high level of intelligence entitles him to disparage others.

     In a commanding prologue, Catilina tentatively steps onto the rooftop of the Chrysler Building. A vertiginous sequence follows and we learn that Catalina has the power to stop time, a sci-fi element explained by Catalina's invention of the substance Megalon.

    No need to memorize, it won't be on the quiz.

    Cesar's ability to freeze time reflects his power as an architect and artist. Artists can stop time -- or at least to freeze it with images, stories, etc.

    Presented in the broadest of strokes, the story centers on the conflict between Catilina and Frank Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), the mayor of New Rome, an imaginary city that resembles New York.  Deeply skeptical about those who want to create utopias, Cicero speaks the language of pragmatic politics.

     Megalopolis, by the way, is the utopia Cesar wants to build within the borders of New Rome, a "futuristic" city  in which the police cars look like they came directly from 2024, print editions of tabloid newspapers can be seen, and cigarette smoking hasn't vanished.

      Among New Rome's residents, we also meet Cicero's daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel). Early on, Julia seems more interested in partying than artistic vision, but she's drawn to Cesar, and they eventually fall in love. 

     Dad objects. So does Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), a character who enters the movie as a well-known TV reporter and Cesar's mistress.

     A striver of the first order, Wow eventually marries Crassus (Jon Voight), perhaps the richest man in New Rome. Shia LaBeouf plays Clodio, Crassus' treacherous grandson. Late in the movie, he seals a conspiratorial pact with Wow by having sex with her. He calls her Auntie Wow, suggesting a bit of incestuous creepiness.

     A large cast weaves its way through a visual showcase that mixes dreams, special effects, and diaphanous dissolves in which one image peeks through another. If there were such a thing as visual indigestion, Megalopolis could give it to you.

     I can't single out any of the performances but will note that Driver works his way through an arc that includes Cesar's arrogance, moral collapse, and rebirth as, let's say, a true artist or, in the movie's terms, a man who finally can love.

     Plaza seems totally committed to her role, as does LaBeouf, who delivers a major helping of craziness.

     Laurence Fishburne portrays Cesar's driver, a loyalist who also provides occasional narration.

     It's difficult to discuss acting when the characters function as archetypes that represent the story's conflicting values. Crassus stands for capitalist greed, for example.

     Coppola's screenplay, by the way, draws on a real bit of history, the Catilinarian conspiracy of 63 BC. You can look it up. But characters' names are linked to Roman history, and Coppola presumably sees parallels between the Roman Republic on the cusp decline and ... well ... I don't need to spell it out for you.

     Coppola does that with dialogue -- often presented in form of bromides, aphorisms, and quotations from philosophers. Many lines have on-the-nose clarity, and the film's ending borders on agitprop as Coppola invites the audience to engage in a conversation about what kind of future it wants, topping it off with a greeting card flourish: We owe it to the children.

     Megalopolis can be as baffling as it is engaging; it may serve as a kind of exclamation point to Coppola's long-standing commitment to cinematic daring, as well as an expression of hope for a chaotic world.

      Whatever it is, it left my head spinning.