‘Megalopolis’: Francis Ford Coppola’s Opus Is the Laughingstock Everyone Feared
About midway through a press screening of Francis Ford Coppola’s much-discussed and long-awaited Megalopolis at the Cannes Film Festival, the screen went black and someone ascended the stage in front of it. For a moment, you could feel the entire theater on edge as if something had gone desperately wrong. Maybe there was a technical issue? Maybe we would need to evacuate? Instead, the person took out a mic and “played” the role of a reporter asking Adam Driver’s character questions at a press conference following a major disaster. Driver, of course, remained on screen and when his answer was finished the man left the stage and returned to his seat in the front row.
In a movie full of bizarre and baffling choices, this was maybe the most inexplicable. Does Coppola imagine this happening at every screening of the film? And if so, what are the logistics of that? And what is the point? To ostensibly represent living humanity in his movie about the future? Or just for kicks?
That said, the sequence, live actor included, also may have predicted what is to come for Megalopolis. This is the kind of movie that will live on in midnight screenings. The phrase “destined to be a cult classic” gets thrown around a lot these days and mostly inaccurately—something that is weird but popular and critically acclaimed does not a “cult classic” make—and yet it seems to actually apply here. Megalopolis is stilted, earnest, over the top, CGI ridden, and utterly a mess. And yet you can picture a crowded theater shouting along with Jon Voight as he says in one key scene, “What do you make of this boner I got?”