It’s been four days since Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” screened here and know what? People are still talking about it. You’ll still bump into someone who wants to vent — positively or negatively — about their experience watching this highly eccentric film. There are also many I’ve spoken to who want to see it again.
The massive, sprawling film, financed by $120 million of Coppola’s own winery money and starring Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza, Giancarlo Esposito and Jon Voight has drawn the most polarizing reviews of the fest. It did garner the lengthiest standing ovation so far, out of any premiere, clocking in at 10 minutes long. The Debussy press screening got a mixture of applause and boos.
In a conversation with The Wrap, Coppola is saying that he’s unaware of any divided reaction to the film:
Well, I didn’t find that. Is that what a lot of the reviews are saying? I haven’t read that. I’ve read a lot of good reviews, but maybe they’re not showing me the bad reviews. All I know is I came here, I showed the picture and I’m told it went over very well. Or maybe it didn’t, I dunno. But that’s what they told me.
What’s interesting to me is that the French reviews have been much more forgiving. You have Cahiers du Cinema calling it a “masterpiece” and giving it a perfect 4-star rating on critics grids. Les Inrockuptibles also believes it’s pretty close to masterful. There are other outlets who feel the same way, with also a few detractors added into the mix.
U.S. critics have been less kind — “Megalopolis” currently has a 59 on Metacritic and 52% on Rotten Tomatoes.
As for myself, I’d like to watch it again. There’s so much going on, in every frame of “Megalopolis”, that the end result can be very overwhelming. I definitely wasn’t bored by its idiosyncratic vision and the illogical actions taken by its characters. Coppola’s film is madly ambitious and staggering in its passion. The plot is undescribable, the acting and dialogue purposely kitsch and it all plays like a madcap surreal dream.