Director Francis Ford Coppola premiered his self-financed film “Megalopolis'' at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday, revealing an ambitious and passionate project that the 85-year-old director has been dreaming up for decades.
No debut film was as curious as the one Coppola released at Cannes after selling part of his wine estate and spending $120 million of his own money. Like Coppola's Apocalypse Now some 45 years earlier, Megalopolis arrived with rumors of production turmoil and doubts about its potential appeal.
What Coppola has presented cannot be easily categorized. It's a fable set in a futuristic New York about an architect (Adam Driver) who has grand visions of a more harmonious metropolis, and whose extraordinary talents include the ability to start and stop time. “Megalopolis” is set in the near future, but it is framed as a Roman epic. Driver's character is named Cesar, and the film's New York City features a modern-day Colosseum.
The cast also includes Aubrey Plaza as an ambitious television journalist named Wow Platinum, Giancarlo Esposito as the mayor, Laurence Fishburne as Cesar's driver (and the film's narrator), and a man named Claudio. Shia LaBeouf is included in the role of his obnoxious cousin.
The film is dedicated to the director's wife, Eleanor Coppola, who passed away last month.
Mr. Coppola walked the Cannes carpet on Thursday, wearing a straw hat, carrying a cane and clinging to the arm of his granddaughter Romy Coppola Mars, as the “The Godfather'' soundtrack played over the festival's speakers. Inside the theater, Coppola waved her hat and shouted, “Thank you!” The crowd stood applauding him for several minutes. Also in attendance were Richard Gere, Cannes jury president Greta Gerwig and Abel Ferrara.
Director Coppola is looking for a distributor for “Megalopolis.'' Prior to its premiere, the film was purchased in some parts of Europe. IMAX CEO Richard Gelfond said “Megalopolis,'' which Coppola believes is best viewed in IMAX, will be shown around the world on the company's large-format screens.
Coppola, who previously wrote a book called “Live Cinema and Its Techniques,'' experimentally defies conventional filmmaking conventions at various locations in “Megalopolis.'' At Thursday's screening, Jason Schwartzman appeared halfway through the film, walked across the stage to a microphone, and asked questions to the driver on the screen above.
A few weeks before Cannes, Coppola held a private screening of “Megalopolis'' in Los Angeles. Word quickly got out that many people were perplexed by the experimental film they had just seen. “The commercial prospects are zero, but it's good for him,” one attendee told Pac.