With Megalopolis, Coppola makes Baz Luhrmann seem like a shy introvert

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MEGALOPOLIS ★★★

(Unclassified), 138 minutes

When the manager of the Godfather films, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now, invests $180 cardinal of his ain wealth into a passionateness project, you person to instrumentality notice.

Adam Driver plays a visionary Nobel Prize winning designer Megalopolis.

But erstwhile Francis Ford Coppola’s output successful the past 25 years is made up of the little-seen Youth Without Youth, Tetro, Twixt and Distant Vision, you’re close to beryllium sceptical. Does the legendary American director, astatine the property of 85, person immoderate much large films successful him?

The reply turns retired to be, well, maybe. But helium didn’t person to enactment them each successful this one.

Megalopolis, which had its Australian premiere astatine a sold-out IMAX screening astatine the Sydney Film Festival connected Saturday nighttime aft respectful but mostly unflattering reviews successful Cannes past month, is simply a monumentally ambitious sci-fi drama. It centres connected a Nobel Prize winning architect, Cesar (Adam Driver), who works to rebuild a mentation of New York called New Rome arsenic a sustainable utopia, with absorption from a metropolis official, Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito).

Complicating matters is that Cesar falls for Cicero’s girl Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), a aesculapian schoolhouse drop-out who is the lone New Rome nonmigratory who sees that helium has the powerfulness to intermission time.

As each those Roman references suggest Megalopolis is an allegory astir the illness of the United States arsenic an empire, with references to societal upheaval, fiscal inequality, Donald Trump’s hollow posturing, 9/11 and the storming of the Capitol.

But it’s besides a Shakespearean play astir the quality of power, implicit with dialog from the Bard’s plays and profound-sounding declarations from past philosophers. Less neatly, though it’s an elusive movie to understand, it’s a metaphorical autobiography astir a visionary creator whose creation tin halt clip but who is flawed by his manias and obsessions.

Megalopolis isn’t truthful overmuch a movie arsenic aggregate films that swap successful and swap retired implicit 138 minutes.

It’s a sci-fi communicative astir what we are leaving down for the adjacent generation, with imaginative touches similar Cesar’s imaginativeness of a metropolis wherever everyone has their ain backstage plot and tin get places connected a moving walkway that’s similar a river.

Adam Driver and Francis Ford Coppola connected the Megalopolis reddish carpet astatine the Cannes Film Festival past month.

There are besides moments erstwhile Megalopolis seems to beryllium a superhero movie with Cesar wearing a cape, doing that clip pausing happening and cheating death. More consistently, it’s a movie astir film, with Coppola perpetually shifting perspectives and filmmaking techniques, experimenting with divided screens and animation astatine times and relishing its ‘shot connected a dependable stage’ look.

For a memorable mates of minutes, the surface goes achromatic and an usher successful the assemblage takes over.

For each the imagination, lofty ideas and experimental boldness successful Megalopolis, it’s an uneven film. Driver holds it unneurotic but determination is excessively overmuch surface clip for insignificant less-appealing characters, notably Shia LaBeouf arsenic the treacherous Clodio, Aubrey Plaza arsenic the gold-digging Wow Platinum and Jon Voight arsenic the mega affluent banker Crassus.

It’s nary astonishment that Coppola financed it himself. Megalopolis is specified a swirling bundle of ideas successful hunt of a unifying rule that no-one other would person enactment up the money. But possibly conscionable this once, the creation of cinema tin beryllium arsenic important arsenic the container office.

Is it worthy watching? As an creator connection from a legendary filmmaker, a qualified yes. But carnivore successful caput that Coppola makes Baz Luhrmann look similar a shy introvert who makes humble home dramas.