It’s been 45 years since the now 85 year old Coppola won the Palme d'Or for his Apocalypse Now, a film that defined the Vietnam war era and created a legend. Coppola had already become the leader of the New Hollywood movement with his 1972 Godfather ,the first film of the Godfather trilogy, and turned its actor Al Pacino into the period’s biggest mega-star. Coppola won the Palme d’Or in 1974, for his thriller The Conversation, which received the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival making him one of only ten filmmakers to have been awarded the Palme d’Or twice.
Since his apotheosis with the Godfather trilogy Coppola has had a long and distinguished career in cinema receiving five Academy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, two Palmes d'Or, and a BAFTA. But in recent years his daughter the director Sofia Coppola has become better known to European festival audiences than her distinguished father.
His last outing as a director was The Rainmaker in 1997. So the long in gestation Megalopolis has been both highly anticipated and a source of much rumour and speculation.
Coppola came up with the idea for the film more than 25 years ago but then abandoned the project after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York because he felt it was inappropriate at that time. While set in a bizarre futuristic period of time the film also somehow harks back to the turn of the millennium.
The director invested 120m USD of his own money in the project which he has been working on for decades. It was shot mostly in Atlanta Georgia and the film which creates its own surreal world is heavy with VFX special effects.
Many in the film industry have questioned the commercial viability of the film despite its legendary directory and famous cast that includes Adam Driver, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Talia Shire and Dustin Hoffman
Megalopolis is billed as an epic Roman fable that has been reimagined as modern day America. The city of New Rome which is obviously a sort of futuristic New York must change to survive. This stirs up conflict between the genius artist Cesar Catilina, played by Adam Driver, an idealistic artist determined to create a utopian city of the future, and his opponent Mayor Franklyn Cicero, played by Giancarlo Esposito, who is committed to the status quo and the greed and special interest groups that run the city.
This grandiose dream fable might just be the legendary Coppola’s swan song after a career that has spanned more than 50 years and redefined cinema.
Credits:
Megalopolis (USA)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Kathryn Hunter, Grace VanderWaal, Chloe Fineman, James Remar, D.B. Sweeney, Isabelle Kusman, Bailey Ives, Madeleine Gardella, Balthazar Getty, Romy Mars, Haley Sims, Dustin Hoffman
