“Megalopolis”: Francis Ford Coppola, trapped in his labyrinth

Although his own Francis Ford Coppola have said that “Megalopolis” It is his last film, surely he is already wanting to make another one, and I hope he can make it. In his essay “The three steps of megalomania” the mexican Gomez Riera describes how an author, feeling that his magnum opus is the object of ridicule and misunderstanding, retreats to a corner, wounded in his soul, and returns with a humble, small, but beautiful work. He exemplifies it with D.W. Griffith that after “Intolerance” did “Broken saplings”. So we are already waiting for the next one. Coppola.

The one we see now, since it was presented in Cannes, has been beaten up. On the one hand, one appreciates his youthful spirit to dazzlingly experiment with new techniques, as he did at the time with “One from the Heart”, another misunderstood one that everyone loves today. And we say youthful spirit in a man who is already 85 years old and spent his own savings to do what he felt the need to do: a warning about the social and political state of his country, which in his eyes already looks too much like decadence. Roman Republic, about to fall into the hands of who knows what arrogant person with the pretensions of an emperor.

So far we are doing well. Roman history lends itself, as the novel did “The heart of darkness”of Joseph Conradset in Colonial Africa, to transfer it to the Vietnam War and offer in “Apocalypse Now” an intense and sensorial reflection on human decadence. “This is the End”we heard Jim Morrison while everything was burning before our eyes. But in the script of that play they accompanied him John Miliuspoet of violence, and Michael Herrwar correspondent. In “Megalopolis” Coppola it played itself.

For more risk, he took two historical figures, the consul Cicero and Catilineand he turned them around, perhaps because he heard that “history is written by those who win” and he thought what if the honest Cicero falsified the facts and ultimately Catiline Wasn’t he a bad person?

Here Cicero He is the mayor of New Rome, New York, concerned about public accounts while keeping the private crimes of his own life hidden. And his rival is an architect who dreams of giving the people a truly human city, only to do so he acts as an absolute individualist who feels superior to anyone. In this the echoes of “One against all”the film that exposes the very American thought of the philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand.

Other figures, such as the rich Crassus and the opportunist Clodius They are closer to the image that history has left us with them. The blonde thing Vesta Sweetwater It also coincides: in Ancient Rome, if it was discovered that a vestal had lost her virginity, she was buried alive (luckily here they only degrade her). The climber Wow Platinum synthesizes and updates the bad memory of several wives and lovers, we will not go into it further. small license, Tulliathe consul’s daughter, had three husbands, but none was Catilinelike the Julia that we now see, necessary license to help the conciliation of the opposites. That is precisely what it proposes. Coppolato give his story a hopeful ending, with some light and innocence.

The biggest problem is that, between technical experiments, symbolic and human entanglements, some science fiction for a rare construction material, and more political fiction and futurology, man has wanted to put too many things, he skates more than once, many people he gets lost, he can’t follow all the threads and consequently he gets annoyed.

Two sentences fit here Cicero: “Let us hope for what we desire, but let us endure what happens.”for those who expected something like “The Godfather”and the famous recrimination “How long, Catiline, will you abuse our patience?” (and there is no doubt that Coppola feels close to that character, as many viewers will feel alien to this film).

That is one of the many famous phrases that adorn the dialogues of the work. Nice detail, in the final credits the list of its authors appears, as if to confirm whether one was correct or not in recognizing it: Bolitho, Catullus, Ciceron, of course, Durrel, Euripides, Abel Gance (another megalomaniac), Goethe, Graeber, Greenblatt, Clive Hamilton, Ibn Khaldun, McCullough, Pico della Mirandola, Plato, Sallust, Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Suetonius, HG Wells, Thornton Wilder, Cao Xuequin. The phrase at the end is a utopian, broad and humanist variation of the oath of loyalty to the flag that schoolchildren, immigrants and soldiers recite in the United States.

“Megalopolis” (USA, 2024); Dir.: Francis Ford Coppola; Starring: Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Aubrey Plaza, Nathalie Emmanuel, John Voight, Laurence Fishburne.