The organizers of the famous French festival in Cannes rolled out the red carpet, Thursday, in front of the American director Francis Ford Coppola, aged 85, who presented his new film, considered by some to be his last, on Croazeta, quoted by Agerpres.
“I dedicate my film to hope and children. Let's create a world for children”, said the American filmmaker to the applause of the audience, at the end of the official screening of the film “Megalopolis”.
The presence of the “Megalopolis” film team on the steps of Cannes will go down in history, but not necessarily the film itself.
“You don't make art if you don't take risks”, emphasized the legendary director in an interview for France 2 recorded shortly before the film team climbed the steps of the Palace of Festivals and Congresses in Cannes, referring to this pharaonic project in which he invested 120 million dollars of his personal wealth.
In New Rome, a fictional megalopolis at the intersection of New York, Ancient Rome and Gotham City, Francis Ford Coppola imagined the battle between an aging mayor, played by Giancarlo Esposito, and the chairman of his urban planning commission, played by Adam Driver .
Esposito wants to rebuild the city, whose statues are crumbling, using a revolutionary material he invented himself, Megalon, to replace concrete. And he falls in love with his rival's daughter, played by Nathalie Emmanuel (known from the series “Game of Thrones”).
The film explores several narrative tracks – Adam Driver can stop time with a snap of his fingers, which prevents him from falling from the top of a building, a Soviet satellite deviates from its trajectory and risks crashing to Earth, the character played by Shia LaBeouf conspires against the powers that be – only to abandon them.
From a quote from Shakespeare, the feature-length film switches to archival footage of Hitler and launches into a critique of capitalist society and Donald Trump-style populism – which we would have expected to be sharper from the filmmaker's ” Apocalypse Now”, a masterpiece with Dante's footage that resonated in its time with the wounds of an America emerging from the Vietnam War.
“We could lose our republic. Republic and democracy are precious, and having a king would mean going backwards“, insisted the American director in his interview with the France 2 television station.
Potentially uncertain
“Megalopolis” compares modern-day America to the decadent Roman Empire and combines elements of science fiction, new age thinking and neo-antique style, a combination that risks boring the audience.
Francis Ford Coppola. PHOTO capture YouTube Festival de Cannes
The question that arises is whether this film, unlike anything else, could impress the jury chaired by Greta Gerwig.
After a forty-year wait, during which Francis Ford Coppola dreamed of this project without realizing it, the American director invested part of his fortune in it, selling some of the vineyards he owned.
“Who knows what will happen?”
The filmmaker took the risk of entering the competition at the Cannes festival and hopes to win the Palme d'Or trophy for the third time – a performance that would be historic – after victories with “The Conversation” (1974) and “Apocalypse Now” (1979).
“When everyone was criticizing me, the Cannes Film Festival changed the public's opinion about <
A sign of extremely uncertain commercial potential, “Megalopolis”, produced outside the circuit of the major Hollywood studios, has not yet found a distributor in the United States.
“How could this film be widely distributed when, in the middle of its two hour and 18 minute running time, a real actor stands up in the theater to address the screen live and wear a dialogue with Adam Driver?“, AFP journalists ask.
The impressive cast also includes 1970s stars Jon Voight and close friends of Coppola's, including his sister Talia Shire, who plays Adam Driver's character's mother, and Laurence Fishburne, who played a teenager in the “Apocalypse Now”.
Probably Coppola's farewell moment
The presence of the film's crew on the steps of Cannes on Thursday night, when Coppola wore a straw hat and walking stick, to the music of the film “The Godfather”, however, will remain in the history of the festival, as probably the farewell moment of one of the last legendary directors from the New Hollywood cinema trend.
The special moment took place in the absence of the filmmaker's wife, Eleanor, to whom Francis Ford Coppola was married for 60 years, but who died recently, on April 12.
