Probably the most dull thing to do is to discuss a movie that critics have already consigned to the dustheap of critical disapproval, where all the ladders start. Here goes nothing...
The whole Francis Ford Coppola story of Megalopolis has been done to dust by now - we know he spent his own oodles of vineyard cash, to make a movie that all on set felt was lunatics running the asylum level batshit bad, and that the 40-year-gestating rough beast slithered out like a viscous grotesque from The Substance, to near-total disappointment, that worst of all responses, as if a Gladiator's codpiece slipped to reveal a tiny rubber duck. This man, we were reminded, was a Genius with the same capital G as for Godfather (1 and 2), and he also made The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now; then loads of mediocre films, except some were zany and brilliant, like his Dracula.
It is hard to think of any other filmmakers from America, other than say Spielberg, Scorsese, Kubrick, Ford, Welles, Wilder, Lynch, Spike Lee, Oliver Stone, Altman, Huston, Wyler, Capra, Hawks, Woody Allen, Lucas, Cimino, and John Carpenter, as well as Sofia Coppola, well, in short, it is not hard to think of other filmmakers who have made a long list of great films in a decade - for instance, William Friedkin's The French Connection and The Exorcist one-two punch in the early 70s is staggering for genre genius - making the best gritty cop and maybe best Horror film of all time in three years. Hell, Sidney Lumet (remember him?) came out with Serpico, Murder on the Orient Express, Dog Day Afternoon and Network - all seen as basically masterpieces now, in 1973, 1974, 1975, and 1976. But anyway, The Godfather is often seen as the great American picture (with its sequel) - up there with Citizen Kane.
Anyway, Megalopolis is a mega flopolis. Everyone who saw it was embarrassed - the old man had lost his mojo, was out of control, and so forth. So I saw it, and that's not the movie I have seen.
Megalopolis is in fact a pure treat for cinema lovers, for cineastes. It's one of the most joyous, cultured, generous, weird, eccentric, playful, risky and provocative American pictures, ever. And, it is very very obviously a dizzying, fun ride across all the major Hollywood genres, in an eclectic rush of styles, tropes, themes, costumes, and dialogue - for instance:
1. Sci-fi - most obviously, as the main hero is a mad inventor.
2. Roman-gladiator-epic - we have chariot races, and we have Caesar, etc.
3. Film Noir-gangster - we have shady city officials, murder rumours, investigations.
4. Romance-screwball comedy - we have slapstick, we have swooning on girders.
5. Western - we have a nutcase dressed often as Custer; and the fall of the West.
6. Horror - we have ghosts, we have grotesque holes in faces.
7. Shakespeare-classic - we have To Be Or Not To Be....
8. Experimental - we have moments of pure abstract colour and shapes...
9. Musical - we have a singing Vestal Virgin, and songs.
10. Silent film - we even have a Lumiere Brothers moment with the moon.
11. Erotic/porn - we have Wow Platinum and kink.
The movie is best watched as a true, madcap, wildly-spinning kaleidoscope, almost literally throwing every kind of way of being a movie at us - compelling us to constantly either just laugh and revel, or at least accept, that we have no bearings here - this is cinema as pure jouissance, as deconstructed signs and semiology run amok - creation as chaos, art as artifice, and film as a stage on which ideas jostle with silliness and pathos, insight and idiocy. The film presents a world like ours - marred, flawed, weird, incoherent, jostling, crowded, portentous, rich, varied, wild, strange, and both hopeful and odious. Evil and money align, but talent, vision and love win out. Utopia is built, time is variously stopped and started, and a totally unrealistic "fable" is presented, a tableau vivant of wonderful, stupid, wise, brash and astonishing things - a Big Tent - the American Show.
One day, this will be considered a masterpiece, a crowning achievement. It will be appreciated not by ironing out its wrinkles, its faux pas, but by accepting the gift, and wearing the motley ourselves, to be both fool and king, for a few hours. But not yet. For a few more years it will be a curio at best, a folly, a big waste of megabucks, a fool's errand and a wasted opportunity, plus a rubber crutch in a polaroid war - and suddenly, one day, it will be watched, marvelled at, and enjoyed for the ludicrous excessive romp of giddy utopian glee it is - a World's Fair where all is fair in love, war and urban planning. Get there early and enjoy it now.
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