All of the information from the 77th Cannes Movie Competition
Formally unveiled Thursday night in Competitors on the 77th Cannes Movie Competition, Megalopolis will in all probability not earn Coppola a 3rd Palme d’Or, after these received for Secret Dialog in 1974 and Apocalypse Now in 1979.
An outdated sea serpent
New Rome, twenty first century. Just like the Roman Republic earlier than it, the American Republic is in its demise throes. Just a few decadent ultra-rich households rule town, dominated with an iron fist by ultra-conservative mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito). His sworn enemy, Caesar Catilina (Adam Driver), head of the Bureau of City Planning, goals of fully reworking New Rome to rework it into Megalopolis. A utopian metropolis constructed fully utilizing Megalon, a miracle materials of his invention, which earned him a Nobel Prize. If his uncle, the rich Crassus (Jon Voight), on the head of the financial institution of the identical identify, is able to assist his considerably loopy undertaking, his cousin Clodio (Shia LaBeouf) is set to place obstacles in his approach . A jet-setter accustomed to movie star magazines, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), Cicero’s daughter, is intrigued by this dreamer and shortly falls in love with him…
Cannes Movie Competition: Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas or the return of the outdated brothers of New Hollywood
Megalopolis is a undertaking that Coppola has been speaking about because the early Eighties. On the time when his buddy George Lucas (who will obtain an honorary Palme d’Or on the finish of the competition) triumphed with Star Wars, the filmmaker additionally had, the need to attempt science fiction. This concept by no means actually left him. He additionally admitted to having agreed to direct Dracula (1993), Jack (1996) and The Idealist (1997) for the studios to have the ability to finance this extraordinary undertaking. After the September 11 assaults – tough, on this context, to think about a brand new utopia for New York – Coppola deserted the undertaking in 2007.
In 2019, the undertaking was nonetheless relaunched and the director didn’t hesitate to supply this spectacular movie along with his private fortune, for a price range estimated at round 100 million {dollars}. The movie will in the end be shot between November 2022 and 2023 in epic situations – Coppola has in actual fact fired a big a part of his technical crew: the design director, the creative director and the top of visible results.
A bloated movie
An outdated sea serpent within the historical past of cinema, Megalopolis ought to maybe by no means have risen to the floor. Primarily based on actual property shenanigans, the movie’s plot appears caught in Eighties New York. Whereas the parallel between the autumn of the Roman Empire and modern America is so clear that it loses all evocative power.
Sofia Coppola: ‘Priscilla’s story is an excessive depiction of the norm anticipated of ladies at the moment’
Along with its kitsch peplum facet happening in a retro-futuristic New York, Megalopolis is a movie bloated by its pretension, full of philosophical quotes, Latin expressions and grandiloquent dialogues, which even the good Adam Driver has issue delivering… Face to those nice truths delivered like flashes of brilliance, whereas they’re typically nothing greater than platitudes, we predict just a little of Terrence Malick from Tree of Life or To the Surprise… Whereas the hero, this providential man surrounded by ladies swooning over his genius, appears to return from one other period.
Coppola, the stylist
Indigestible in substance, Megalopolis is rather less indigestible in kind. Coppola remained an excellent stylist and produced some very stunning sequences, notably essentially the most experimental. However will he be capable to discover his viewers? With its astronomical price range for an unbiased manufacturing, the movie will undoubtedly have issue attracting the curiosity of distributors – in the US, no studio has in any case taken the danger.
Megalopolis is certainly a wierd blockbuster, whose absence of motion scenes will undoubtedly chill most of the people and whose verbose chatter will hardly delight moviegoers. Maybe the outdated director ought to have saved his vines…
