dir. Francis Ford Coppola
A misunderstood, maligned artistic genius has the vision and skill to save the world from itself, if only the people would listen. This not only describes the central premise of Megalopolis, but seemingly also Francis Ford Coppola’s conception of himself as he made this profoundly bizarre mess of a movie. Ego suffuses every overwritten, paradoxical and unnatural word of dialogue. Heavy-handed allusions to ancient Rome are as contrived as the characters’ motivations. Everyone’s grandiose gestures and pompous expressions make clear that Megalopolis is meant to be taken seriously – but how can anyone take the terrible visual effects and confusing excuse for a plot seriously? How can anyone take character names like “Wow Platinum” and “Vesta Sweetwater” seriously? How can anyone take lines like “I’m oral as hell,” “I won’t let time have dominion over my thoughts,” or “Time, stop!” seriously? From spontaneous bursts of sitar, to a baby floating on a tiny rug, to a near-imperceptible and surprisingly inconsequential nuclear incident, it is meant to be taken seriously. At one point a character takes the hat off his own head, drops it and barks at a minion to pick it up; the minion does the same to the minion behind him, and so on – and yet, even still, it is meant to be taken seriously. Coppola would presumably say that anyone who declares Megalopolis anything less than a work of genius is simply not operating at his cognitive level, but this is a cognitive level no sane human would ever want to be at.
BMDb 