“Megalopolis”: Coppola’s Opus Magnum – A Cinematic Catastrophe | NDR.de – Culture – Film

Status: 25.09.2024 06:00

A new film hat directing legend Francis Ford Coppola has been working on for 40 years. What emerges is a lush, twisted sci-fi drama with perhaps even side plots that are all ins non-leading.

by Anna Wollner

For 40 years there is war in the “Megalopolis” war. 40 years of the first vision of Francis Ford Coppola with a fast Zweieinhalbstündigen Epos. It is never the case that a monumental work, his Opus Magnum, a life’s work, no one produces anymore. Coppola has brought the 125 million production costs himself, a company that has sold a company and won everything in “Megalopolis”. The idea of ​​a madwit – and that has become a film: a madwit, a leader of the degenerate, bad inszenierter Ritt, the overladen ist – from the first to the last, from 138. Minute.

Adam Driver is also a big man

“Megalopolis” is a Roman epic, now that the Metropole is no longer Rome, located in America, in an alternative Reality – New Rome in New York. A number of tragedies, which are given Gladiator Fights in Madison Square Garden, played by Adam Driver main figure called Cäsar, by Mayor Cicero. Cäsar Catilina is a brilliant architect with a great architect, who has a new Bausubstanz-kreiert: Megalon. Damit will – the Willen des Volkes – breathe new life into the city.

It is a great experience when the film is muted by the film. It is possible that there is a problem with the treatment and the solving of problems, which are all nichts führen. There is a Liebesgeschichte zischen Cäsar and the Daughter of the Mayor. Coppola has his own Angaben von Voltaire inspired by Kubrick, Murnau, Goethe, Platon, Fellini, Bergmann, Hesse, Hitchcock and Shakespeare – to name but a few.

“Megalopolis”: A Single Cinematic Catastrophe

The dialogue is about the time when the scale of the prominent cast of Adam Driver, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Dustin Hoffman and Lawrence Fishburn bordered on a refusal to work.

The Kulisses in this retro science fiction setting are among others film noir stil of the 1930s and 1940s, under art deco, under Bauhaus; Hauptsache viel, large and opulent – ebenso who is the orgy that is celebrated here. 40 years Coppola has worked on his opus magnus. It took 40 years before we ended up in a “Megalopolis”. This is a single cinematic catastrophe.