These are not going to be reviews… not film criticism… just some thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head about these 2 movies that landed on real-world movie screens this weekend.
My experiences of both were very, very different… even before seeing the films. I love Coppola dearly, perhaps as lovingly and protectively as Bilge Ebiri is with Michael Mann. (I also love Mann and have since the TV days… but not willing to go as far or as recent as Bilge has gone.) And my personal history goes through Saturday Night Live, now 39 and 40 years ago. Adding to that, I worked for Jim Henson, on and off, for a couple of years back in New York.
I have very warm place in my heart for some serious film critics trying so hard to embrace Megalopolis. In truth, I think that they are saying, in this case, “Back off, inexperienced, glib people who call themselves critics but are really just shooting ftom their under-film-educated hip… you are in the presence of a master who invested his fortune in a personal work and you don’t have to like it, but you fucking well better respect the ambition and the act.”
Which makes it all the sadder for me to have found Megalopolis shocking.
Within minutes, I was struck with a thought that kept recurring through the experience… that this “vision of the future” was a vision from the 1980s and might have been much more compelling if it was made on the 1980s. But this is 2024. And there is not a single thing as shocking or thought-provoking in Megalopolis as there has been in the last week’s coverage of Sean “Puffy” Combs megalomania. Or for that matter, Donald Trump’s ongoing public madness, as a convicted sex offender (by way of a civil case) whose now-dead 1st wife was the 1st of those saying this man raped her with dozens of other women who basically all looked very similar have convincingly claimed that he molested them in various ways, as he suggested he felt comfortable doing on an audio tape that he didn’t know was being taped… and this lunatic is saying he is going to make the world safe for women. Forget all the abuses - including the intentional broad-daylight murder of Roe, which allowed for some part of women’s human rights in America - and just ask whether this man has ever shown the slightest interest in what would make women feel safer in American life. Madness!!!
There are old ideas that convert to modern art with great skill and renewed vigor. But the end of, basically, the American civilization under the weight of corruption amongst the powerful and wealthy does not call, in this moment, for grand guignol. It’s meant to be a documentary!
You know who does make the movies that Megalopolis seems to have hoped to be in some ways? Pablo Larraín. He takes historic figured - sometimes fictionalized - and reduces the entire experience down to a few clear ideas. He doesn’t make biopics. He takes a very narrow slice of a very famous life and he pulls out the soul. And similarly, Sofia Coppola often works in that same sandbox. Many of her movies about about young women in a heightened world full of male power. And she dives deep, pulling out the essence.
Francis Coppola obviously was going big with this film. Big images and broad ideas. But he lost the trees for the forest in so many ways.
The second thing that really struck me about Megalopolis was that it felt, from start to finish, like unfocused Julie Taymor. And you know what? There isn’t a lot of unfocused Taymor. Sometimes when she touches, the focus is too much-es for a lot of audiences. Personally, I am a huge fan of her Titus, based on Shakespeare. And the movie has a super theatrical tone from stem to stern. It is a story of false modesty, seduction, power, and enormous abuse. The central character is driven mad because his sense of idealistic behavior is, in his aging, no longer honored… and it costs him his most-loved daughter, piece by piece, and his nation, and finally sparks his revenge.
A filmmaker pretty much has to reach for more symbolic art to tell that story. What audience could deal with - and it’s hard to deal with as it is - a literally offered rape followed by the removal of arms and tongue so that the victim can not accuse her abusers? How can you watch a story with your heart ripped out? Taymor’s artistry allowed some distance so that one could keep working through the tale. And when our mad hero feeds the evil mother of the 2 destroyers the flesh of those 2 destroyers in a pie (spoiler warning!), the horror is soothed by the twist and, really, Titus’s madness. He was the personification of the state… and now cannot trust the state in any way, a loss which is part of his madness. (For what it’s worth, I would argue that Joel Coen’s take on Macbeth took a similar tack.)
But for Francis… a true master of storytelling… a master wordsmith… a genius at keeping his film stories grounded and painting those landscapes with unexpected moments of magic… this is not his comfortable space.
I love One From The Heart, which like Megalopolis, leans heavily into the style of the fable. But part of what I gather many people don’t like about that film is that it is a tiny, tiny intimate story in an Oz-ian version of Los Vegas. Even so, that tiny story of a stale relationship reconsidered, is what keeps the movie from floating away… that and the beyond glorious song soundtrack by Tom Waits and sung by Waits and Crystal Gayle. In One From The Heart, the magical is actually fantasy. Frannie and Hank are worker bees, a little tired of one another, and living in this Vegas backdrop of endless lights and beauty. And Coppola was really changing cinema in the making of this movie.
Megalopolis is not a fantasy, even if it is visually fantastical. At its core, the powerful characters do have the power to change the world. How can all this “fall of the Roman empire” stuff not seem petty and almost meaningless? With due respect to the endless lust to which flesh is ere, it’s small fish.
Another thing that has changed dramatically since the 1980s is how money moves in the world. Of course, there are still the wildly rich… more than ever. But Coppola, who historically makes movies about families, makes Megalopolis a movie about families. But why?
Adam Driver’s Cesar Catalina is related to Jon Voight’s Hamilton Crassus III through his mother, Talia Shire’s Constance Crassus Catilina. The competing family are the Pulchers, led in this film by Shia LaBeouf’s Clodio. Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who is corrupt and in conflict and coercion with the Crassuses and Clodios, is father to Julie Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel), who will be one of Cesar’s love interests.
This is a messy soap opera for no good reason. There is no time to really explore these relationships. And while you can make up reasons why this choice or that choice is made, the movie doesn’t do its job in motivating the choices.
One of the greatest sins of all is that Cesar Catalina has 3 dubious sexual relationships in the course of the movie, suggesting there are dozens more… because the ones he has seem random and replaceable and we all know that men who sleep with women in that way tend to replace them randomly on the regular. We don’t really know why Cesar screws every beautiful thing in his view and range of opportunity. Even “because he can” doesn’t really hold up in the context of the story. As I recall. blurrily, the idea that sex is the only time his genius is restrained and he is just living is floated. But, boo!
Mind you, Adam Driver, who I now call The Auteurist Movie Killer, is part of the lack of any connection to human emotion. He is, indeed, a unique physical specimen. And he is very good at rage and confusion. But that is about the emotional range he brings as an actor. Sorry. But he has been great in a few things - starting with Girls and c continuing with Marriage Story - that managed his skill set brilliantly. The rest have a giant hole in the middle of them. Well, at least 6’ 2”. (I still have hope for 6’ 5” Jacob Elordi.) Directors love him. GREAT directors love him. I believe this to be some kind of madness.
But I digress…
So after all that… Coppola is so busy trying to taste every flower he buzzes past, the movie loses track of its storytelling… constantly. Julie Taymor has always suffered from that issue…. but she has almost always worked from some stable piece of writing that pulls her back in from the abyss. Coppola is way out in the ocean in this one. Half the roads and twice the detail could have saved this film at least to the point of being able to argue on its behalf.
What does Cesar need?
This is the most important question and I could run through a list of things he chases in the film, but in the end, aside from the idea of Megalopolis, I have no idea what this man, at the center of the film, really needs. What is he trying to prove? What does he have to lose?
And I have to say, when any film is reduced to spouting quotes - its own and from history - with the glorious voice of the great Laurence Fishburne - who plays a version of Alfred to Cicero’s Batman here… which feels insulting, though Fishburne brings his best effort - you are telling, not showing. And that is death.
And with all respect… Megalopolis is a dead movie. If you want to show love to The Master, you can find the pretty remnants and embrace them. (“The room is so ugly… but I like the color of the paint on that one wall!”) But I can’t recommend this movie to anyone.
The Mike Figgis documentary on the making of the film may be the greatest film school documentary ever made… very possible. But I don’t know that I want to see it anytime soon. The thing about Eleanor Coppola’s singular doc on making Apocalypse Now is that the film was already known to be a masterpiece before it landed. The story here is not ever going to be that pretty. Thanks to Coppola’s great winery wealth, this one could be as bloodless and fun as Pepe & Fulton’s Lost in La Mancha, which followed the film that never got made. (Note: When it eventually did get made and made it almost impossible for Gilliam to ever direct film again, who starred? Adam Driver.) But it scares me and might break my heart.
Francis Coppola is a beautiful spirit. No question, he has flaws. But he has the heart of the greatest artists and that will not ever change. I wanted to tell everyone that the word on this movie was wrong. But I cannot. And this makes me very sad.
On Saturday Night…
The screenplay by Jason Reitman and Gil Kenan challenges itself in that it is the last 90 minutes before the first ever episode of Saturday Night Live (nee’ Saturday Night). The goal, I have read in publicity interviews, was to offer the energy that putting up the show every week (Season 50 premieres tonight) has, but more specifically this opening night.
As someone who experienced that mania first-hand for a season and change, it is hard to seperate the realities of what goes down in that studio, those hallways, those elevators, those offices, that observation room, and that stairwell from the art of trying to squeeze it all into 90 minutes.
And really, I don’t want to.
I mean, I can tell you that going from the outdoor skating rink at 30 Rock, even empty, to Studio 8H is at least a 12-minute run, if you are in a hurry. The offices for the show and 8H are also on different elevator banks. I mean, these are minor. And maybe Belushi really went down to skate before a show at some point. But did Lorne? In the movie, Lorne also goes to 50th St to greet Andy Kaufman. In reality, those 2 outdoor visits alone would take up 1/3 of the film’s running time.
But I really tried to put things like that aside.
And the repeated theme of the film, “What is this show?” is kinda bullshit. I believe Tebet said it. Maybe Ebersol said it. But Laugh-In happened in 1967. As did The Carol Burnett Show. As did The Smothers Brothers. Etc, etc, etc. Lorne himself had produced specials with Lily Tomlin and Flip Wilson.
Live television is how it all started. Uncle Miltie did live TV. (And why was he in the building on Saturday at 10p? If he did a live show then, he was in the middle of it when this movie starts at 10:30p. But not looking for a fight.) It is fair to say that SNL did change the trajectory of sketch comedy… but it was no revolution… least of all in form. Cold Open, Monologue, Sketches, Musical Guest, Weekend Update, More Sketches. A couple tape pieces. It was late at night and it was 90 minutes. A fresh coat of paint… not a mystery.
The “I gathered all these people” thing irked me a bit. He found Second City, National Lampoon Radio Hour, a Groundling, and the odd ones out, Jane Curtin (from off-Broadway) and Garrett Morris. But half the group were rising frontrunners before SNL.
What Lorne Michaels has done is remarkable. Truly. I honor and respect his history and the work in a way that I didn’t so much when I lost my job at 21 because he returned to the show and cleaned house. (The alternative was wrestling… so better he came back.) So I don’t mean to diminish a run unlike any other in the industry. But sometimes the deification gets a bit much.
But I think what Gil and Jason were after - and achieved pretty much in the last few minutes, even if unrealistic - would have been better achieved by a less clever structure. Monday morning to Saturday night is a remarkable run. There is pretty much nothing on Monday morning and more sketches than will make the show get selected on Wednesday afternoon… and then it is a sprint to Saturday at 11. The tension of the time frame they dramatized - dress rehearsal to live air - is spectacular. full of excitement and frustration and rage and change… a lot of change.
And then it is 11:30. And by 1am, it’s over and nothing that came before matters anymore…. mostly nothing that happened that last week will ever matter that way again.
But the idea is the idea. And I respect that.
I thought Dylan O'Brien and Dan Ackroyd and Nicholas Braun and Jim Henson brought those people to life with the most accurate energy. Not enough Anne Beatts in the movie for me. JK Simmons gets Berle right, down to the schlong. Nicholas Podany found Billy Crystal late in the movie. Tommy Dewey kinda dominated the movie as Michael O’Donoghue, my only issue being that he is more physically intimidating in the film than in real life… his mouth was his weapon. And again, not enough Anne. None of the actors is bad… just underwritten.
I understand why people enjoy the movie. It’s a solid entertainment. It’s just hard to be taken out of the drama every minute or two because something feels wrong. My problem. My fault. Not fair to judge the work on that basis.
Until tomorrow…
You lose all credibility when you go off on an unhinged TDS rant.