Megalopolis

Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis is a nightmare superimposed on reality. New Rome, the bustling metropolis, is not the hedonic ancient world of Caligula nor the future but a deadly version of the present. It's a fable (the directors own word) Coppola style, a Gesamptkunstwerk in which a cinema legend pulls out all the punches for what is stated to be his last go round. Apocalypse Now would have been a good description of January 6 which is one of major obsessions of Megalopolis, which is is also a swan song for a generation of cinema legends from Lawrence Fishburne, to Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voigt. The movie is also a mess of operatic proportions. When you hear "to be or not to be," quoted by Adam Driver, the film's. visionary Ayn Rand style architect, you at first think it's a joke. Then you realize it's serious when "this is the stuff that dreams are made on" is tossed off. And what about the leaden dialogue itself? It's as if the screenplay had cotton in its mouth. No sign of the masterful transactions that characterized The Godfathers and almost every other film Coppola laid his hands on.  One can't help noting the allusion to Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927). It's interesting though that this metropolis is not really visionary. Rather it's post-apocalyptic and ragged in a Mad Max kind of way. The sets look like they've been hit by a hurricane. One scene in the major's office desk is sinking into sand. This is more than an imperfect world.  Is the film's dreamlike quality the message (as in Taumnovella, the Schnizler work on which Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut   (1999) was based or a byproduct of Megalopolis' own flaws?

listen to "Marc Antony's Funeral Oration" by Lord Buckley