Francis Ford Coppola’s 'Megalopolis' Premieres at Cannes 

Mixed Reviews

After 40 years in the making, Francis Ford Coppola’s passion project, Megalopolis, has finally premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. The film received a seven-minute standing ovation but has garnered polarizing reviews, being described as “staggeringly ambitious,” “absolute madness,” and “bafflingly shallow.”

A Long-Awaited Dream Realized

Megalopolis, which screened at Cannes on Thursday night, was once considered a pipe dream due to years of false starts and abandoned shoots. The film’s baroque, borderline unfilmable premise revolves around “political ambition, genius, and conflicted love” in a modern world haunted by the fate of Rome.

Coppola, the 85-year-old filmmaker known for The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, financed the film with $120 million of his own money. The movie stars Adam Driver as Cesar Catilina, a Nobel prize-winning architect and scientist with powers to control time and space. His grand plan for a “utopian building project” called Megalopolis clashes with the goals of city mayor Cicero, played by Giancarlo Esposito.

Star-Studded Cast and Intricate Plot

The film also features Jon Voight as Hamilton Crassus III, who is involved in an affair with TV news presenter Wow Platinum, portrayed by Aubrey Plaza. Shia LaBeouf plays Crassus’s grandson, Clodio Pulcher, a politician.

Mixed Critical Reception

In a two-star review for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw described the sci-fi saga as “megabloated and megaboring” and a “passion project without passion.” He criticized it for being filled with “high-school-valedictorian verities about humanity’s future.”

Bilge Ebiri of Vulture noted that Megalopolis “sometimes feels like the fevered thoughts of a precocious child, driven and dazzled and maybe a little lost in all the possibilities of the world before him.” Ebiri highlighted the film’s unique dialogue, which mixes Shakespearean and Latin influences, and remarked on a scene where Driver recites Hamlet’s soliloquy, questioning its purpose but admiring its sound.

The New York Times observed a “mishmash of acting styles” and noted an unusual moment during the Cannes press screening when a man in the theater interacted with Driver’s character onscreen.

Jason Gorber of the AV Club likened the film to “HBO’s Rome rewritten by a thousand monkeys,” emphasizing its “pure, unfiltered artistic integrity.” He noted that Megalopolis evokes themes of hubris and irony, akin to Greek tales.

Positive Takes

Some reviews were more favorable. Deadline called the film “something of a mess” but praised its “sheer audacity” as the work of a master artist. The New Yorker commended the film for being “aggressively heady, stubbornly illogical, and beguilingly optimistic,” with “stunningly poignant pleasures.”

The Hollywood Reporter acknowledged the film’s self-indulgence but found it “amusing, playful, visually dazzling, and illuminated by a touching hope for humanity.” IndieWire went further, calling Megalopolis a “transcendently sincere manifesto about the role of an artist at the end of an empire.”

Echoes of 'Apocalypse Now'

The mixed reception is reminiscent of Coppola’s 1979 war drama Apocalypse Now, which also faced a troubled production and divisive initial reviews before gaining critical acclaim.

Distribution and Future Prospects

Megalopolis recently secured distributors across Europe just days before its Cannes premiere, though US distribution rights remain undecided. The film’s journey from conception to release has been monumental, and its legacy remains to be seen.