"Megalopolis" - A century of beautiful beasts dancing wildly by Coppola, a baton to the imagination of the future

Synopsis of "Megalopolis"

In the 21st century, in the great American city of New Rome, the disparity between the wealthy who indulge in pleasure and the poor who are forced to live in hardship has become a social problem. Caesar Catiline, the genius architect who serves as the city's Director of Urban Planning and a member of the prestigious Crassus family, promotes the development of a new city, Megalopolis. It is a utopia where people can live equally and happily. However, Mayor Franklin Cicero, who is clinging to his own interests despite financial difficulties, plans to build a casino, bringing him into direct conflict with Caesar. Caesar also becomes embroiled in the machinations of Claudio Purcher, who is plotting to succeed the family, and faces a dire crisis.

Index

• Beautiful Beasts Dance, Reckless Courage
• Stop time! Stop progress!
• Eleanor and Sophia
• Moving walkways, the baton of imagination

Beautiful Beasts Dance, Reckless Courage

The brilliant architect Caesar Catiline (Adam Driver) attempts to throw himself from the top of a gigantic building in New York. Caesar is literally taking a gamble to the death. "To be or not to be, that is the question." Caesar wins this gamble, gaining a grace period to survive in this world. He also gains the courage to build the unprecedented utopia known as Megalopolis. This first scene is a veritable "declaration" from director Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola invested $120 million of his own personal fortune to build the gigantic film/city known as Megalopolis (2024). The near-future city of Megalopolis seems to reflect Coppola's own endless dream of creating "another Hollywood" by building Zoetrope Studios. Coppola's image is superimposed on a bird's-eye view of the city as Caesar peers through a scope.

"Megalopolis" © 2024 Caesar Film LLC All Rights Reserved.

An unmanageable scale. A reckless dream. The commercial failure of " One from the Heart " (1982), which pursued romance amid aesthetic excess, led to Coppola's bankruptcy and the demise of Zoetrope Studios (though " One from the Heart " remains a cherished favorite among filmmakers). "Megalopolis" is a masterpiece that speaks to the same romanticism embodied in " One from the Heart " and Zoetrope Studios. Like Caesar in the opening scene, Coppola once again takes a step toward reckless romance. The scale of this filmmaker's successes and failures is truly extraordinary. Coppola makes films he doesn't know how to make. Jean-Luc Godard once said, "You don't make films; films make you." Coppola doesn't make films; films shape him. Coppola doesn't make good-student films, and we need a reckless romantic like Coppola to resist an increasingly homogenized world.

While the overwhelmingly overwhelming imagery, especially in the first hour or so, can be easily distracting, the plot of "Megalopolis" itself is not particularly complex (as I realized on my second viewing). Despite brief flashbacks and flashbacks of Caesar, the film follows a chronological progression. I realized that the "time travel" depicted in Coppola's "Butterfly Dream " (2007) had a more complex narrative structure. Even so, "Megalopolis" will likely bewilder many viewers upon first viewing. This exceptional masterpiece, unafraid to frequently cross the line between the sacred and the profane, beauty and ugliness, even espousing anachronism, crystallizes images of a "dance of beautiful beasts." Coppola summarises the beauty and ugliness, merits and demerits, and vestiges of dreams of 20th-century visual expression, before questioning the merits and demerits of reckless spectacle for a new era. There's a reason why Megalopolis is filled with spectacles, including theater, circuses, and operas.

Stop time! Stop progress!