Legendary director Coppola presented his Metropolis in Cannes: the premiere divided critics' opinions
Kyiv • UNN
A new feature film from the director of The Godfather premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. The film largely disappointed critics.
At the Cannes Film Festival, cult director Francis Ford Coppola presented his new film, a 140-minute sci-fi movie called Metropolis. As noted by journalists present at the screening, the reaction to the film was the opposite: booing from the audience turned into sincere congratulations. This was reported by UNN with reference to Le Point and The Guardian.
Details
"Megalopolis," Francis Ford Coppola's testament film, was presented this Thursday, May 16 at the Cannes Film Festival. It was the most anticipated screening of the first week in Cannes, and may eventually become the most commented on film in the entire 2024 screening slate.
The 26th feature film from the director of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, according to the impressions after the screening, turned out to be so unusual, excessive and aggressive that it divided the opinions of film critics and viewers quite significantly.
Pulitzer Prize winner Justin Chang writes that Megalopolis is the only topic of conversation in Cannes: "I found it funny, complex, and generally very moving in its utter ridiculousness." Reviews range from something like "The craziest thing I've ever seen" to "super bloated and super boring" (in the UK's The Guardian). Reviews by popular critics in industry publications show everything from minimum to maximum scores.
The Télérama journalist recalls the "Coppola disaster" and bitterly regrets "that Coppola is trying to capture the blockbuster he wanted so badly." The film has a "faux-golden aesthetic, suffocating, already outdated," which "cannot stand and drowns in a pretentiously pretentious mixture.
There are those who were looking forward to the movie, but were disappointed because "the whole thing is endlessly ugly, including the special effects, which seem to come from a computer faked in the 70s.
New York Magazine's Bilge Ebiri wrote that at times the film “feels like the fevered thoughts of a precocious child, enthralled and dazzled and perhaps a little lost in all the possibilities of the world before him.
At the same time, the special correspondents of the French edition of Libération were "stunned" - they describe "an unsurpassed and hazy retro-futurist basque, with a real bit of charm in it.
HelpHelp
"Megalopolis is a scientific and political film, as many viewers suspected: extravagant, grotesque, and ideological. Iconic director Francis Ford Coppola had been harboring the idea of a film about the future of humanity for decades. But the project was too megalomaniacal and radical for investors. In the end, the 85-year-old reportedly invested more than a hundred million euros himself, as no company wanted to finance the movie.
Metropolis is set in an "imaginary modern America". The story centers on Adam Driver as Caesar Catilina, who, as a brilliant urban planner and architect, wants to create a fairer environment for everyone and therefore is in constant conflict with the mayor of the Cicero League, played by Giancarlo Esposito.
Torn between them is the socialite Julia Cicero (Natalie Emmanuel), the mayor's daughter, whose love for Caesar has divided her loyalties, forcing her to discover what she believes humanity truly deserves.
Recall
Elinor Coppola, a documentary filmmaker and wife of Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather), has died at the age of 87. The family of the filmmaker said that she died surrounded by her family in California. The cause of death was not disclosed.
