The Value of Constraint
Francis Ford Coppola’s has referred to Megalopolis as made from the heart, a personal film he dreamed of making for 40 years. It’s also his credo, his cinematic vision for the future of humanity. I think it may be his greatest film. Considering the mixed reviews Megalopolis has received, this is a lot to claim. Many feel that The Godfather and Apocalypse Now rate as two of the greatest films ever made. Megalopolis isn’t perfect, and I’m not sure if it’s even a good film, but it’s this undefinable quality which makes it stand out.
Most films have the same goal. They present characters and place the characters into conflict. The most popular and enduring are those in which the characters are charismatic (not necessarily life-like) and in which the story line is clear. These two principles apply to The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, as well as The Wizard of Oz, Citizen Kane, Rambo and Taxi Driver.
Once these elements are established in the spectator’s mind, the talent of a director can be displayed. He can then add details which create narrative and intellectual depth. These details often reveal the psychology and personal obsessions of the director. They’re the equivalent of the director’s DNA or thumbprint; they communicate that the film was made from an individual viewpoint. This is where great narrative film directors distinguish themselves. It’s in the treatment of the details which make the films of D.W. Griffith, Orson Welles, Stanley Kubrick, John Ford, William Friedkin, Martin Scorsese and Alfred Hitchcock, among others, hold up through time.
Leaving the cinema after the film, I was struck with the funny feeling that there’s no reason to hate Megalopolis just as there’s no reason to love it. It’s a film in which a man is expressing his ideas and opinions about the modern world. Neither good nor bad, it exists outside of the judgments normally reserved for film critiques. Megalopolis has characters and a story line, yet the characters aren’t particularly charismatic and to call the story line diffuse is being polite. The real narrative takes place elsewhere. The real protagonists in the film are ideas, the story and characters are to a great degree incidental. Megalopolis is essentially the film equivalent of a college essay.
Coppola is intelligent and talented, and his capacities as director are unquestioned, yet I can’t say that he shares that psychologically dense character trait found in directors like Hitchcock, Kubrick, Scorsese, etc. Instead, I’ve always sensed in him the tendency towards a certain intellectual dilettantism. For example, when watching Apocalypse Now we see a pile of books in Kurtz’s room, deep in the jungle. These books include The Golden Bough and From Ritual to Romance, two books T.S. Eliot used as references in writing The Waste Land. Seeing them placed there struck me as a sophomoric way to suggest the intellectual depth of Kurtz’s character. The same thing is true in Megalopolis, from references to Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, to Shakespeare’s Hamlet and The Tempest to various apparitions of classical music, to Laurence Fishburne’s solemn pronouncements, we’re faced with references which are meant to suggest intellectual depth but come off more like empty stage props.
These tendencies on the part of Coppola would perhaps benefit from external controls, the type a director is faced with when he is being watched by a group of money-obsessed producers worrying about every dollar spent. One of Coppola’s great talents is that of a gambler. The films for which he’s best known are those when he was up against huge odds, like someone playing poker with his last chip. Coppola often faced the total collapse of his projects, he’s gone bankrupt. He was almost fired from The Godfather and on Apocalypse Now was faced with innumerable challenges including the psychological breakdown of its main actor Martin Sheen who also suffered a heart attack. I’m not sure if total freedom is something that a person like Coppola benefits from.
While I find it interesting as it stands, and as a fellow independent filmmaker salute his boldness in being self-produced, I wonder what Megalopolis would’ve been if he'd been under greater constraints, say, having to make it for $50,000 in an empty gymnasium? I’ve no doubt he would have risen to the occasion.