Francis Ford Coppola premieres ‘Megalópolis’ in Cannes, and the reviews are in

CANNES, France – CANNES, France (AP) — Francis Ford Coppola premiered his self-financed work “Megalopolis” at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday, revealing a hugely ambitious passion project that the 85-year-old director has been pondering for decades.

Reviews ranged from “madness of gigantic proportions” to “the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.” But sure enough, once again, Coppola got everyone at Cannes talking.

No premiere this year was more eagerly awaited at Cannes than “Megalopolis,” in which Coppola invested $120 million of his own money after selling part of his wine estate. Not unlike Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” some 45 years ago, “Megalopolis” arrived accompanied by rumors of production turmoil and doubts about its potential appeal.

What Coppola revealed defies easy categorization. It’s a fable set in a futuristic New York about an architect (Adam Driver) who has a grand vision of a more harmonious metropolis and whose considerable talents include the ability to start and stop time. Although “Megalopolis” is set in the near future, it is conceived as a Roman epic. Driver’s character is named Cesar, and the film’s New York includes a modern Colosseum.

The cast includes Aubrey Plaza as an ambitious TV journalist named Wow Platinum, Giancarlo Esposito as the mayor, Laurence Fishburne as Cesar’s driver (and the film’s narrator), and Shia LaBeouf as an obnoxious cousin named Claudio.

Coppola, wearing a straw hat and holding a cane, walked the Cannes carpet on Thursday, often clinging to the arm of her granddaughter, Romy Coppola Mars, as the soundtrack to “The Godfather” played over the speakers. of the festival.

After the screening, the Cannes audience applauded Coppola and the film for a long time. The director finally took the microphone to emphasize the ultimate meaning of his film.

“We are a human family and it is to us that we must pledge allegiance,” Coppola told the crowd. He added that Esperanza is “the most beautiful word in the English language” because it means hope.

Many reviews were terribly bad. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian called it “mega-bloated and mega-boring.” Tim Grierson of Screen Daily called it a “disaster” “thwarted by arbitrary conspiracies and mind-numbing excess.” Kevin Maher of the Times of London wrote that it is a “head-wrecking abomination.” Critic Jessica Kiang said that “Megalopolis” “is a madness of such gigantic proportions that it is like watching the real fall of Rome”.

But some critics responded with admiration for the film’s ambition. Fondly, Bilge Ebiri of New York Magazine said the film “may be the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.” David Ehrlich of IndieWire praised a “creatively free approach” that “may not have resulted in a surplus of dramatically coherent scenes, but it holds the entire film together with a looseness that makes it nearly impossible to look away.”

“Is it a distancing work of hubris, a gigantic madness, or a daring experiment, an imaginative attempt to capture our chaotic contemporary reality, both political and social, through the kind of big-screen, high-concept storytelling that is rarely attempted anymore? ” wrote David Rooney for The Hollywood Reporter. “The truth is, it’s all of those things.”

“Megalópolis” is dedicated to Eleanor Coppola, the director’s wife who passed away last month.

Coppola is looking for a distributor for “Megalopolis.” Before its release, the film was acquired for some European territories. Richard Gelfond, chief executive of IMAX, said “Megalopolis” — which Coppola believes is best viewed in IMAX — will be shown globally on the company’s large-format screens.

In several places in “Megalópolis”, Coppola, who has already written the book “Live Cinema and its Techniques”, experimentally pushes against cinematic conventions. At a screening on Thursday, a man appeared midway through the film, walked across the stage to a microphone and asked Driver’s character on the screen above a question.

Several weeks before Cannes, Coppola screened “Megalopolis” in Los Angeles. Word quickly spread that many were confused by the experimental film they had just watched. “There are no commercial prospects and that’s good for him,” one participant told Puck.