Arts & Culture
‘Megalopolis’— Francis Ford Coppola Invents a New Kind of Cinema
|
Since its premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in May, each piece of information that came out about Francis Ford Coppola’s self-funded passion project, Megalopolis, made me all the more eager to see it. The summer was full of news stories and think pieces about the struggle to find a distributor for a $120 million budget movie that was almost certain not to make a profit and the new technology developed (and then abandoned) by Amazon that would allow audiences to have their questions answered by Adam Driver’s character Cesar Catilina. Eventually, a distributor was secured (with Coppola shouldering marketing costs himself), Amazon’s technology was replaced with a live performer in certain, “Ultimate Experience” screenings (not included at Regal Ithaca Mall, unfortunately), and the time had finally come for me to see Coppola’s decades-in-the-making epic. The question became — was all the effort worth it?
Megalopolis is unlike anything else I have ever seen. Within the American Republic, architect and inventor Cesar Catilina comes into conflict with New Rome mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) as he attempts to use his inventive new material, Megalon, to create a utopia — Megalopolis.
