“Megalopolis”, why we should defend Francis Ford Coppola! | EUROtoday
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ICoppola have to be defended. Because on the age of 85 he’s attempting to save lots of the world by burning all his ships. The filmmaker clearly considered this expression, “burning his ships”, burn one's boatin English, when he launched himself, lastly, after many years of hindrance, into this nagging movie, Flaubert would say, completely loopy, burlesque, kitsch, megalomaniac, generally catastrophic and hideous, generally grandiose and poetic, creatively ultra- free, and even subversive, as a lot by its decadent aesthetic as by the optimism and religion in humanity and in love regardless of the whole lot, which the filmmaker dares to proclaim, and even preach, with a lyricism to which we’re not used to.
“Burning your ships”: the expression goes again to Roman Antiquity, when the tyrant Agathocles of Syracuse landed together with his fleet, in 310 BCE, on the coasts of Carthage, and ordered his troopers to set hearth to all of the ships, with a purpose to take away any temptation to flee and put their backs in opposition to the wall, or relatively in opposition to the ocean. And what did he do subsequent? The Greek historian Diodorus of Sicily, who in Ier century documented the expedition, tells us: “Agathocles hastened to raise the defeated courage of his soldiers, and led the army to Megalopolis, a Carthaginian city. » “Megalopolis”, you learn accurately. The very title of Coppola's movie offered on the Cannes Film Festival! Which, to provide this modern epic at 120 million {dollars}, needed to mortgage its California vineyards, which, while you love wine like him, is a method of burning your vessels… Just for the panache, we already need to defend Coppola.
Circus video games, orgies and the race for energy
In his new movie, Megalopolis is just not Carthaginian, however New York, renamed “New Rome”. We are in our time, or somewhat later, however circus video games with chariot races are standard there, orgies in gold lamé tunics and embroidered with Greek keys proliferate in nightclubs, and an influential singer in Ukulele calls herself Vesta, as within the goddess who protects the state of historic Rome, swearing to stay a virgin.
The mayor is known as Franck Cicero just like the Roman lawyer, and the hero of the movie, performed by Adam Driver, is known as Caesar… Catilina, just like the instigator of the well-known conspiracy which aimed to take energy in Rome in 63 earlier than our period, and which Cicero thwarted. That of Coppola, furthermore, repeats phrase for phrase, in a passage of the movie, by translating it into English, the well-known diatribe of his historic ancestor: “ Quousque tandem abutere, Catiline, patientia nostra… » “Until when, Catiline, will you abuse our patience? » At Coppola, Catilina does not want to take New Rome: he just wants to reshape it through the gigantic utopian urban project that this architect, inventor of a material with astonishing properties, designed in his office at the top of the Chrysler building, tower of Art Deco ivory overlooking the chaos (the occasion for dizzying cinema shots dedicated to this big apple of steel and concrete, rotten perhaps, but still so beautiful).
A visionary mission that this man consumed by mourning (a self-portrait of Coppola who lost his dear Eleanor in April?) will attempt during these 2 hours 18 minutes to carry out, accompanied by the very beautiful Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), the daughter of Cicero, new wife and new muse, while fighting against the plots of her cousin Clodio (Shia LaBeouf), pathetic Nero from Manhattan, and Vow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), a television Agrippina specializing in stock market courses, plural . At stake is the immense fortune of Catiline's uncle, Crassus (Jon Voight), namesake of the man who was in Antiquity the richest man in the history of Rome, and who here takes on the appearance of a cruel crumb in a total Versace look straight out of an episode of Hunger Games.
A Trumpian universe that exudes dollars and sex
Megalopolis is therefore a peplum transposed into today's New York. As Salman Rushdie did, moreover, with his novel The Golden House. References abound, Latin is spoken in the text, the philosopher emperor Marcus Aurelius is cited, but in a totally Trumpian universe, which exudes dollars, sex and botox. It's flashy like the Caligula by Tinto Brass, mafia like The Godfather, overexcited and full of substances like Traisnpotting and depressing lucidity on another Empire, America, threatened with fall by the weight of social inequalities, the carnival excesses of a freewheeling aristocracy prospering on a submissive people, but addicted to populism.
READ ALSO Jean Labadie: ““Megalopolis” will shock you on a regular basis” We generally consider Cosmopolis of Cronenberg or Batman reviewed by Christopher Nolan. With one massive distinction: Coppola, by bursting the display below this torrent of amphetamines, gold, homicide and ambition (and actually bursting the display since in the course of the movie, a person within the flesh arrives within the room to interview Adam Driver-Catilina, who clearly remained on display), nonetheless provides our world disadvantaged of bread however filled with video games, an opportunity to redeem itself. We are usually not obliged to stay to the function of brutes that the period has chosen for us, Coppola asks us to imagine, a moralist and loving grandfather anxious concerning the destiny of those that will come after him, on situation solely that we don’t not surrender on creation and the that means of utopia. A swear phrase ? Alea jacta est.
https://www.lepoint.fr/culture/cannes-2024-megalopolis-pourquoi-il-faut-defendre-francis-ford-coppola-17-05-2024-2560397_3.php