Hyderabad: The 85-year-old director Francis Ford Coppola unveiled his extremely ambitious passion project, Megalopolis, at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday. The opinions expressed for Coppola's pet project varied from "the craziest thing I've ever seen" to "a folly of gargantuan proportions." Despite the mixed reviews, Coppola captivated the attention of everyone at Cannes once again garnering a standing ovation from he crowd.
Megalopolis, in which Coppola invested $120 million of his funds after selling off a portion of his wine estate, debuted this year at Cannes similar to Coppola's Apocalypse Now, which debuted about 45 years ago. However, Megalopolis was accompanied by rumours of production difficulties and uncertainty regarding its commercial viability. The film's story, which takes place in a futuristic version of New York, centres on an architect (Adam Driver) with the amazing ability to start and stop time and a lofty vision of a more peaceful city.
Megalopolis is fashioned like a Roman epic even though it takes place in the near future. There is a contemporary Coliseum in the New York shown in the movie. The Cannes crowd gave Coppola and the movie a long-standing ovation following the screening, however, the reviews have left the critics and the internet divided. Several social media users also shared their opinion of the film on X.
Journalist Peter Bradshaw described it as "megabloated and megaboring." It was a "disaster," "stymied by arbitrary plotting and numbing excess," said Tim Grierson. Kevin Maher from a leading international daily described it as a "head-wrecking abomination." Megalopolis is "a folly of such gargantuan proportions it's like observing the actual fall of Rome," according to critic Jessica Kiang.
On the contrary, a few reviewers expressed their appreciation for the film's boldness. Bilge Ebiri expressed appreciation for the movie, stating that it "may be the craziest thing I've ever seen." A "creatively unbound approach" that "may not have resulted in a surplus of dramatically coherent scenes, but it underpins the entire movie with a looseness that makes it almost impossible to look away" complimented David Ehrlich.
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