Knock on Wood

As of writing, I graduated from college one week ago, and reviews for Francis Ford Coppola’s self-styled magnum opus Megalopolis are emerging from the Cannes Film Festival, where it’s currently looking for a domestic distributor. One of those events is much more important in the grand scheme of my life, and the other is a watershed moment in the life of one of the greatest directors who ever lived.

As I begin to look to my own future, it’s exciting to see a creative force I have always admired achieve a lifelong dream. Coppola has been working on Megalopolis since the early 1980s, and its release marks the culmination of over forty years of starts and stops, failed productions, and a constantly changing roster of stars. There is no better encapsulation of how much the film landscape has changed in so short a time – Megalopolis has gone through upwards of 300 rewrites, but the core concept has endured through decades of change, both in available technology and general attitude towards avant-garde filmmaking (in addition to the state of the world – 9/11 made the narrative, which features a major disaster destroying a New York-esque metropolis, even more undesirable).

But the fact that it has finally been made should be a good sign…right? Coppola sold most of his California “wine empire” and footed the entire $120 million budget himself, so his commitment shouldn’t be understated. One might think that with the amount of work and time Coppola has put into the project, it’s bound to be one of the greatest and sharpest pieces of art ever put to the silver screen.

The first reactions and reviews from Cannes tell a different story, but not necessarily a disheartening one.

Bilge Ebiri, the film critic for Vulture, began his review by recounting that “the moment when an actual live human walked out in front of the movie screen to pose Adam Driver’s Cesar Catilina a question (which Cesar, in the film, proceeded to answer) might, in retrospect, be one of the less bizarre moments in Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis.” Already, I am riveted by even the possibility that this not only happens in the film (eliciting more than a few logistical questions) but that it’s far from the strangest is even more intriguing.

David Ehrlich of IndieWire writes that Megalopolis “crams 85 years’ worth of artistic reverence and romantic love into a clunky, garish, and transcendently sincere manifesto about the role of an artist at the end of an empire. It doesn’t just speak to Coppola’s philosophy, it embodies it to its bones.” Whatever most critics have to say about the film’s failings, most point out that it’s almost part of its charm. It seems that there’s even though the effect of Coppola’s endeavors falls entirely flat, it’s admirable that he even attempted those big swings at all. Ebiri says that “There is nothing in Megalopolis that feels like something out of a ‘normal’ movie. It has its own logic and cadence and vernacular. The characters speak in archaic phrases and words, mixing shards of Shakespeare, Ovid, and at one point straight-up Latin. Some characters speak in rhyme, others just in high-minded prose that feels like maybe it should be in verse. At one point, Adam Driver does the entire ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy from Hamlet. Why? I’m not exactly sure. But it sure sounds good.”

I always admire a risk, and Megalopolis looks to be one of the riskiest films ever put to the screen…and for that alone, it has my anticipation. I was excited before, but the uncommon mixture of vitriol, adoration, and everything in between immediately makes it even more fascinating. Never before have I seen early critical reactions swing in every conceivable direction, though never quite reaching the extreme of both poles, and that alone piques my interest irreparably high. Some are saying that Megalopolis is one of the wildest things they’ve ever seen, and there will never be anything else like it. That’s the way to sell a movie.

Do I wish I was at Cannes? Of course I do. But I’m almost more intrigued by these initial reactions, which accomplish what they should – showcasing a wide range of perspectives and opinions, none of which are overwhelming in any particular direction, allowing my excitement to build without putting an impossible pressure upon it. The trailers I have seen sold me already, but hearing of its unimaginable ambition and catastrophically insane execution (like a bigger version of Chazelle’s Babylon) is music to my ears.

Megalopolis could be a colossal trainwreck, or it could be a genius work of experimental arthouse cinema. It could be both. Whatever it is, I’ll be there opening night, prepared for the unexpected and the utter strangeness to sweep me away.