It seems like this review can find little to praise beyond the abstract idea of a benevolent visionary who struggles against a world full of philistines.
I thought Kate Wagner's review was a lot more insightful:
> Even though architecture, being drafted and built by many human hands, has never been a solitary art, writers and filmmakers like Rand and Coppola cling to the image of the sole male architect for a reason beyond mere misunderstanding of how architecture works. Architecture, to them, is public-facing, rooted in space, an art exacted upon the landscape. It can be forced – as Megalopolis is – into existence in spite of or to acculturate an ignorant or philistine public that knows no better. Being in the world, it must be reckoned with, thus eliminating the challenge of cultivating an audience that plagues other artistic endeavors. In other words more fitting to the theme of gender: architecture is the least consensual of all arts. Its power lies in being inescapable, unlike, say, seeing a really bad movie.
Excerpted from https://www.late-review.com/p/megaflopolis
Not everything is about gender.
Yeah but Megalopolis is, lmao.
From the Wikipedia plot summary:
> Crassus and Wow throw a decadent wedding reception. Ironically, the headliner is pop star Vesta Sweetwater, who appeals to New Rome's puritanical sensibilities by promising to remain chaste until marriage.[f] To neutralize Cesar, Pulcher leaks a paparazzi video of Cesar having sex with Vesta, prompting Cicero to condemn Cesar in a speech drawn from the real-life Catilinarian orations. Although Cicero arrests Cesar for statutory rape, Julia exonerates Cesar by discovering that Vesta faked her age and is actually in her twenties.
Megalopolis is fascinated with gender.
> Crassus kills Wow and injures Pulcher with a hidden bow and arrow disguised as his erection.
Obsessed with gender, even.
Haha have you _seen_ Megalopolis?
surely some things are. such as the critical reading of the film we were provided. its a compelling critique, one that certainly rises above whatever quality your insipid response is made of.
Not unrelated: "A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines." -Frank Lloyd Wright
I think most people are unaware that Coppola has also directed the following: Twixt (2011), Tetro (2009), Youth Without Youth (2007), The Rainmaker (1997), Bram Stokers' Dracula (1992), The Godfather Part III (1990), Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), Gardens of Stone (1987), The Cotton Club (1984), Rumble Fish (1983), The Outsiders (1983), and One from the Heart (1981).
In other words, Coppola has directed plenty of bad to mediocre films after his incredible run from The Godfather through Apocalypse Now (1972 to 1979). Granted, that run was enough to forever ensconce him in Pantheon of great films directors. I think Megalopis is getting so much (undeserved press) because Coppola says its his last film and it was self financed. The trend line in his movies, however, has been negative for a long time. So, were it not for those two remarkable attributes, Megalopis would probably have come and gone with little notice, much like the rest of his since the 90s.
I never understood the hate against the Godfather 3; I thought it was a good film. Not quite as good as the first two but that was a high bar to meet. Sofia Coppola really wasn't as bad as everyone keeps banging on about.
I think before the internet these sort of cultural takes seemed to calcify based on what was written in newspapers by tastemakers and became the conventional wisdom, parroted by whoever wanted to be seen as being in with the tastemakers.
One of the biggest things traditional media mourns is this perceived power.
I thought Godfather III was a good ending that made an important point about how hard it is to escape a cycle of violence once it’s begun. I think a lot of the hate is from people who thought the point of the movies was “gangsters are cool”
Yes, I agree. Also I rather liked the end where an old Michael just dies alone with no one to notice, much less care. Lost two brothers, lost his first wife, lost a daughter, estranged from his wife and son. All the years of pain, anguish, and death. And ultimately it was all for nothing.
Coppola changed that ending in the recut "Coda" version he did a few years ago. Don't really understand why he did that – Michael's lonely death always seemed like the ultimate take-away from all three films.
Isn't Dracula universally praised?? (I don't know about at the time)
People make fun of Keanu's accent, but everything else seems to be super positive.
Rumble Fish (Mickey Rourke before he got swole) and One From the Heart were both thoroughly enjoyable… but also both curate’s eggs.
Then there’s 1996’s Jack (Robin Williams opposite Fran Drescher) which is apparently so horrifying that it didn’t even make your list :)
Interestingly, critics have started to reevaluate many of these movies!
One of my favorite movies is ‘Night of the Hunter’. It was critically crucified to the point where the director (Charles Laughton) never directed another movie. I am not being hyperbolic when I say that this was a loss to humanity and culture. Of course now, all critics are desperate to broadcast its brilliance.
Professionals are often blinded by the conventional taste that they worked so hard to develop.
The first editor of “Midnight Cowboy” resigned because he felt the naturalistic footage looked terrible and couldn’t be used for a proper movie. The film won Oscars for both Best Picture and Direction.
Bram Stoker's Dracula is one of my favorite movies and I'm thankful it exists.
Many of the movies you've listed are indeed excellent, for example The Outsiders is by now a cult icon for how many future stars it launched and both Tetro and Twixt made it to the Cahiers du Cinema top 10 movies of the year (and Youth Without Youth was also very highly received there).
Original works of art that don't conform to the conventional norms of their time are likely to be panned by critics and ignored by the public at first. Only with the passage of time are we able to reevaluate more objectively those works of art which are truly original. In the cacophony of the moment, it's hard to distinguish genius from folly.
It happens with original music that doesn't conform to the norms of its day: https://www.honest-broker.com/p/why-did-the-beatles-get-so-m...
It happens with original paintings that don't conform to the norms of their day:
https://medium.com/@parkwestgallery/park-west-gallery-review...
It happens with original films that don't conform to the norms of their day:
https://screenrant.com/great-movies-panned-critics/
By all accounts, "Megalopolis" is an original work of art that doesn't conform to today's conventional norms. Only with the passage of time will we be able to recognize if it is genius or folly.
Survivorship bias, most original things that are panned by critics and fail to find an audience get ignored forever.
I never said otherwise. My point was and is that only with the passage of time can we identify the survivors, i.e., the works that stand the test of time.
Or, if someone is a person of judgement and taste, who regularly watches and enjoys films a lot more experimental than Megalopolis, and one went and saw the film, perhaps one can reasonably come to the conclusion that the film is an artistic and intellectual failure.
That, occasionally, some original works of art have been underappreciated is hardly a reason to suspend judgement about all art that vaguely gestures at being slightly unusual.
Coppola has demonstrated a pattern of success in this vein so it's reasonable to believe this film will, at some point, be recognized in the same way.
"Coppola has demonstrated a pattern of success in this vein"
Is this true? Apocalypse Now got relatively poor reviews when it originally came out, but I think most of his other movies are still largely seen in a similar light as when they came out.
Oh yes, Coppola has been accused of all manner of experimentation orthagonal to the zeigeist. I remember Tucker being panned for being kitcsh, then being complimented later for the same reasons. I mean look at his filmography its all over the place, and he had to literally kill Michael Corleone so the studios would stop harassing him for sequels.
I understand looking at a film 'in situ' by itself of course but it's more fun to see a coppola or a scorsese or even a james cameron.
It's a whole arc for him, and anyone who can't see Metropolis through that lens... is missing out on a cool and dramatic history of filmmaking.
I think it will be recognized because auteur theorists will consider it a meaningful (likely last) work by Coppola, who will be canonized. Basically it will be recognzied for things outside the actual text, and things outside the text is all everyone seems to be talking about with this film (namely what it says about the economics of film these days, and auteur driven projects largely being nonexistant.)
Recognizing a work as a valuable part of an artist's oeuvre, even if it's not a seminal work, is a legitimate form of appreciation - and it doesn't have to meet cultural norms in order to be praised.
"The end of the auteur" is a headline as old as art criticism, and one of its most forgettable. Contrast that with the naysayers who decried Pollock or Kubrick – I don't remember their critics' names, do you?
I was about to pan this as yet another shallow "all great art gets criticized" take (ignoring that a lot of things that get criticized actually ARE crap). But then I got to the last paragraph.
Yes, it's been rejected now, but maybe someday people will reevaluate it. Maybe they'll still think it's crap; maybe not.
I liked “Megalopolis” a lot, but admittedly I have a high tolerance for cult movies. (Well-engineered by-the-book storytelling feels increasingly boring. It’s a much greater pleasure to be constantly surprised and occasionally frustrated by an earnest attempt for cinematic poetry.)
I loved the “Jean Cocteau meets Showgirls” overall vibe. The madcap acting and superficial dialogue recalls silent movies and even Guy Maddin’s work. The visuals are like the world’s most expensive B-movie — in a good way.
It seems people have a hard time seeing movies as an artificial composition. Actors and their lines are referential elements within a work, not a reflection of reality.
Everybody understands this in theatre and opera, but somehow cinema audiences seem to have regressed in this regard. (I’m assuming viewers of Cocteau’s “Orpheus” didn’t complain that it’s not actually possible for a man to walk into a mirror. Yet that’s the kind of criticism we hear about elements in “Megalopolis.” The whole architecture thing is a metaphor, not an actual proposition for redesigning cities.)
I’m glad Coppola got to make his film, and I look forward to rewatching it in decades to come.
I saw it early because I was genuinely excited for something "new", not a sequel or remake etc, and it was truly new. I have never seen another film like it.
Was it a great movie? Nah. It was however a visually stunning ride. I was at no point bored, at no point did it drag or seem to overstay its welcome.
The dialog can be pretentious at times, but Adam Driver did an amazing job making you believe he truly meant the things he was saying. He was genuinely fantastic in his role. One of the biggest dings against the movie however is some of the other lead actors seemed to not understand the meaning of the words coming out of their own mouths, which can make it feel at times like a High School Shakespearean production.
The amount of hate it's been receiving is silly. I think if you have a mildly open mind to strange movies, it's well worth your time. It's weeks later and I am still thinking about it. I can say that about very few films these days.
Able Gance’s 7 hour epic Napoleon (1927) employed split screen projection, superimposition, location shooting, super-close up…. All unheard of at the time. But the advantage he had was that cinema was not yet ‘invented’. That would not happen till Hollywood streamlined production and (importantly) consumption. This was effectively Fords assembly-line ethos applied to art. In contrast, Gance believed cinema has the same potential for depth as literature.
Coppola has always had a desire to re-invent cinema. He tried and failed with the digital production techniques of ‘One From the Heart’, though much of what he introduced presaged techniques that are common nowadays.
With Megopolis he seems to be trying to re-invent the form. I believe that is a folly. The form of Cinema is now pretty much fixed in stone. Reinventing it would likely be as successful as reinventing the chair. You might produce something that ‘works’. But people would be unlikely to accept it.
I continue to hold out hope some insane billionaire will fund the production of the other two parts(!) of Gance’s Napoleon.
As black and white silent epics shot and edited on film with only practical effects, naturally. :-)
I'm not an AI fanboy but I think this might be good usecase for generative AI. Generate a storyline from the history in this style, then the visuals from that.
I saw Megalopolis and loved it. Mind you I went in knowing that it was apparently a $100 million Neil Breen flick. That only made me want to see it more though, since I've sat through all of Neil Breen's movies in awe of how bad they were.
Hard for me to call Megalopolis bad though.
It's operatic and impressionistic. People keep asking what it all means, I've never thought you had to know what a movie means to enjoy it.
Something like Southland Tales, meets Tree of Life, meets Neil Breen.
I agree with many points in the review. Of course people expect the world from the person who directed Godfather and Apocalypse Now. Megalopolis is a mixed bag, but not a bad movie. Its good moments are actually pretty good. It's like we got the real Copolla for half of the movie.
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honestly there's too many quarter baked ideas. catalina can control time, but it's not used for any reason. megalon can build a building, or make a medical device for dogs or be used as a biofoam-esque bone restoration thing for catalina post gunshot.
where is the clock catalina and juila spend time on? what was the house with catalina's wife supposed to represent? why is clodio even in the film? can we explore the tiny bow and arrow that is used to kill wow but only hit clodio's butt? why is clodio killed for that?
i understand that it is a competently developed film, but it is full of unexplored concepts and poorly formed sequences. i'd argue it is much more like a well produced album that is devoid of any meaningful songs.
I think the subtitle "A Fable" does a lot to provide cover for some of the things you bring up. My 2¢ on a few of your questions:
* I saw the ability to start and stop time to represent creative vision. At the beginning of the movie, Catalina is in his office, then nervously goes out to the edge of the building and steps off then commands time to stop. I think this was him testing if he still had the ability to be creative because he didn't know if he could or not. Julia "sees" his creative ability during the building demolition, and demponstrates her understanding to Catalina, which is why he reveals his model to her, and with her eyes closed she can "see" how he actually envisions it. He tries to stop time in jail and finds he no longer can, after encouragement from Julia together they can start and stop time. I see this as either Julia becoming his muse, or that they are now creating collaboratively.
* I think this also explains the scenes of them on the clock, which is supposed to be a figurative location. I'm pretty sure we only ever see Julia and Catalina there. It's because only they can enter this metaphorical creative space together.
A few questions I have are: why do they need a lock of Catalinas wifes hair to heal his eye? Why as prosecuting Catalina did Mayer Ciscero hide Catalinas wifes corpse. Would be curious to hear others thoughts.
He hid the corpse so that he could charge Catalina with making her disappear I think.
I thought the film was highly enjoyable. It was in a grandiose and operatic style, but I just kind of accepted that, plus there was a lot of hilarity.
Those questions all have clear answers
I have a feeling that Megalopolis is going to end up as one the great cult classics.
The Graeber and Wengrow influence (he cited like six of their books as his primary inspiration multiple times and did an interview with Wengrow) is underrated. It’s the most interesting aspect of the work and no one mentions it (just Rand which misses the point)
That’s what got me excited about the movie in the first place - but leaving the theatre I felt like Graeber would be spinning in his grave.
A Randian California Ideology hero is the exact opposite of what he spent his life arguing and fighting for.
And it reminded me of the Adam Curtis line: “we now all live in the mind of a dying hippie”. It seems like Coppola fits that bill perfectly.
I agree he appears to misunderstand Graeber/Wengrow, given his remarks on Instagram, but I still find his enthusiasm for their work is an important angle that is completely absent from the discourse. I'm also not certain the architect portrayal is meant to be idealistic or unproblematized