Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola, 2024)

[Altair]

A beautifully written review of Megalopolis by Manohla Dargis in the Times

the image of Catilina and Julia kissing exerts its own gravitational pull on you, as do so many of the movie’s other ravishing visuals: a flower stand that vividly brightens a gloomy street (shades of Hitchcock’s flower shop in “Vertigo); the city’s monumental stone statues coming to life only to collapse in apparent despair; a vestal virgin (Grace VanderWaal) swinging above the fray as she fades. Coppola’s delight in the plasticity of the medium is infectious. The beauty of some of his images is overpowering, as in a brief interlude that shows an enormous pale hand reaching across the screen from a bank of clouds to grab the moon, an image that could be right out of early cinema at its most feverishly untamed.

[Peter-H]

I just saw this, and it brings me no pleasure to say that it might be the worst movie I've ever seen in a theater.

There are many campy and silly elements in the movie (this is especially true of the performances). In another movie, these elements would come off as intentionally humorous. However, this film's tone is so portentious and self-serious that it doesn't normally play that way. Instead, these elements play as weird and disorienting. The movie has lines like "revenge tastes best in a dress" (said by Shia-labeouf's cross-dressing character) and "you're so anal, I'm so oral" (said by Aubrey Plaza to Adam Driver as she's about to give him a blowjob). Are these lines supposed to be funny? In the context, it's hard to tell, and either way it doesn't land. The movie is also filled to the brim with arty affections that come off as incredibly goofy. For instance, there is a scene that cuts back and forth between a circus performance and Adam Driver convulsing against a psychedelic background. I think he's tripping on drugs, but I'm not really sure. Either way, the sequence is supposed to be impressionistic and abstract, but it comes off as, and I'll use that phrase again: incredibly goofy. But again, it's not goofy in a fun way, because the movie is too self serious for that.

I don't even know what to say about the plot. The movie is filled with clunky exposition which doesn't make the convoluted narrative any clearer. It's supposedly about the conflict between Cesar Catalina, a progressive visionary, and the mayor, who represents a more moderate perspective. However, the movie sets up this conflict and then drops it until maybe an hour in, and it surfaces only sporadically from then on. The rest of the movie just feels like random, disconnected segments. For example, there's an inexplicable subplot involving a pop star who auctions off her virginity, which is then dropped and never brought up again. Overall, the movie is very dull because there are no clear stakes and there is no narrative momentum (because there's barely a narrative).

The movie also thinks it's saying way more than it is. The central conflict is between Adam Driver's character, who wants to use a magic substance that will make society a perfect utopia forever, and Giancarlo Esposito's character, who is against doing that for unclear reasons. The conflict seems like it's supposed to mirror present-day political debates about progress. However, Adam Driver's character is so obviously correct in the context of the story that there is no insight to be gleaned about real word political conflicts and the merits and shortcomings of different ideologies.

I also totally disagree with Manohla Dargis about the visuals; I thought they were extremely ugly. In many scenes, the CGI backgrounds reminded me of the music video for In The End by Linkin Park. There are, of course, movies that employ deliberately hyperreal CGI, but film makers can do that in a way that looks beautiful. Here, the VFX just look cheap and tacky. The cinematography was also awful. Many scenes were shot and lit like any random network TV show. Everything about this movie feels cheap: the costumes look like they come from Party City; scenes that are supposed to have large crowds feel like they have 25 extras on set; the title cards look like they were thrown together in PowerPoint. It seems like almost all the money was spent on the actors, because aside from the cast and the colosseum scene, this movie feels like it could have been made for 2 million dollars. I couldn't believe how amaturish the movie felt given Coppola's talent and stature.

Many have used words like "unhinged" and "insane" to describe this movie, and those descriptions are accurate. But it's not unhinged and insane in an entertaining way. Some movies are insane in a visceral and overwhelming way, so even if you don't like the movie, you're at least not bored. However, this movie never feels visceral and overwhelming, partly because of the amaturish quality and partly because it's so convoluted and talky. Instead, it just feels very long and very boring. I checked my phone at one point and was shocked when I saw that an hour was still left.

Overall, I thought this movie was truly appalling, and I’m sad to say that I felt embarrassed for Coppola while watching it. It's one of the only films I've seen where every actor feels like they are performing in a different type of film. Subplots are introduced with zero payoff. Payoffs are introduced with zero build-up. The plot is virtually incomprehensible, and tonally it's a mess. I was in a theater with nine people (including myself), and three people walked out. I'm surprised this movie has a 50% on Rotten Tomatoes. I obviously can't know for sure, but I wonder if it would have a lower rating if it wasn't made by this director and if it didn't have the legendary back story that it has.

[Never Cursed]

There are many campy and silly elements in the movie. In another movie, the campy/silly elements would come off as intentionally humorous. However, this film's tone is so portentious and self-serious that it doesn't normally play that way. It just plays as weird and disorienting. The movie has lines like "revenge tastes best in a dress" (said by Shia-labeouf's cross-dressing character) and "you're so anal, I'm so oral" (said by Aubrey Plaza to Adam Driver). Are these lines supposed to be funny?

Yes! I'd go so far as to say that both are straightforward jokes with contextually communicated setups and punchlines. In the former case, LaBeouf is goofing around with his partner-in-crime about a disguise, but underneath that is a subversion of the character's heretofore arch-masculine approach. He hates Adam Driver so much that he'll debase his Roman virtus (in his eyes, and also in a certain sense in the eyes of the film) for revenge. In the latter case, Plaza is attempting to entice Driver into sex with a series of cheeky come-hither one-liners. It's a little broad, because her character is a little broad (in ways that are useful for the critical aims of the film), but it's one of our first signs that Plaza's preferred tactic is overt sexual manipulation (see also: her subsequent interactions with Voight and LaBeouf himself). Her specific phrasing is also a subtle Freudian joke: the anal phase of development follows the oral, so she is rhetorically making herself an "immature" sexual partner, itself a powerful image that recurs through the film. Quite frankly, I think there are several other humorous asides you could have picked from this wonderful film (such as Driver's recitation of the entirety of Hamlet's most famous soliloquy) whose points are harder to grasp.

I think the two major elements of the film's approach that cause it to fail to land for so many people (it seems yourself included) are its simultaneous contempt for conservatism, abstracted in the nightmare cartoon vision of modern elite culture with a Roman makeover, and its equally earnest and sentimental depiction of progressivism, which Coppola conjures as a force so perfect and powerful that it can bestow actual superpowers. When examined from this perspective, the narrative of the film is not so much nonexistent as it is simple and sublimated into the philosophical conflict at the film's core. Similarly, the movie is not a tonal disaster area so much as it is a combination of broad yet pointed satire and deeply sincere suggestion for a path away from what ails us. If you wanted to watch a film that is truly just rudderless setpieces, throw on Caligula. On that movie, Mr. Sausage put it better than I could:

as shot, the movie is a collection of set pieces without a narrative throughline, little sense for the passage of time (we leap forward in time constantly and unexpectedly), and nothing but loose connections between them. There are a lot of moments, but no real movie to speak of. And these moments are always the exact same thing, over and over. There's no variety to them, just the same cruelty, venality, and excess played again and again, sometimes in different environments, usually not. The film is obviously uninterested in either politics, history, or psychology. Its one and only interest is its own prurience, which it indulges at length. Caligula is dull. After an hour, you've seen everything; after two, you're wondering how much more there could possibly be; and by the end of three you're begging for everyone to get butchered and the credits to roll.

Even if you hate this film, I don't think you could make a serious argument that it is either "uninterested in politics, history, or psychology," given how frequently all three subjects recur, or only interested in its own prurience or feeling of self-impressedness.

I also kind of rankle at your description of the movie's central conflict. Cicero and crew's "perspective" on the world is neither moderate nor stabilizing: they are elitists who preserve the unequal status quo for personal gain, in doing so hollowing out society, creating a 1% monoculture as inaccessible as it is repulsive as it is inescapable, and justly attracting the ire of ordinary citizens (note how Esposito is met with constant booing whenever he appears in public, a device that would be effective enough if it were not an eerily accurate replica of the public image of the current mayor of New York, and several other occupants of the same position during the lengthy gestation of this film). What you have cast as disconnected sketch comedy bits are, in fact, vicious satires of the real counterparts of most of these characters. Consider, as you do, virginal pop star Vesta Sweetwater's arc.

Spoiler

During her relatively brief time on screen, she:
1. is presented as an archetypal Vestal Virgin, a woman whose purity represented the spiritual quality of the Roman state (utile elite civic institution)
2. auctions off her virginity to a high bidder (elitist corruption of said institution)
3. is revealed to be spiritually impure (comes to signify the rot and incapacity of ruling elites)
4. rebrands herself as a newly sexually potent adult (attempts institutional transformation)
None of this is subtle, but the point is to connect two separate patterns of social and cultural behavior and use the grossness of one to comment upon the grossness of another. Coppola is using the oversexualization of female teen idol singers and the usual arc they take to talk about the worst parts of conservative culture: it is moribund, predictable, and fetishistically obsessed with the sexual behavior of vulnerable women. It's an accurate read of these types of artistic expression (when I saw Sweetwater's second music video, I could only think about a real teen idol trying to rebrand her sexuality using the verbatim phrases "untouched XO" and "losing all my innocence in the back seat"). But more pertinently, it is a highly effective Vox Lux-esque attempt to expose the interconnected qualities of social problems that share a root cause.

A skeptic of this reading might suggest that the film thus puts its faith too much in Adam Driver's architect and his grand central plan to save humankind, but I think the film is implicitly critical of his actions in isolation. Acting alone, he is a genius, but also a Robert Moses figure, a great planner whose politically entrenched brilliance has led him to disregard the humans whom a better system would serve (hence his copious demolitions of buildings early on in the film and his pigheaded attitude towards displaced residents). Nathalie Emmanuel's character saves him by returning him to humanity, by, to borrow a phrase, being the heart that mediates his head and his hands. Only together and through love can they strive towards the grand civilization-saving plan of Driver's dreams. To Coppola, this is corny, and also true.

I kind of can't believe that it's taken me this long to talk about the special and visual effects, the best and most striking element of this film, but that's because they are, again, powerful contextual extensions of the film's mood, milieu, and message. On one level they are abstracting devices, tools through which Coppola can blend disparate real-world influences like the hold of "Roman-ness" upon the American founding myth or the venality of mainstream news media or the mental disarray of post 9/11 New York, but their form too does tremendous things for the movie. Some parts of the film, mostly those with the villainous characters, feature what I would call deliberate tackiness, with overlit shots, asymmetrical camera movements, heinous CGI elements, and garish costume and hair/makeup choices. Most of Voight and Plaza's wedding, for instance, features all of these elements, culminating in Driver's drug-enhanced freakout in which the hideousness of New Roman life physically harms him. But these are combined with effects that are utterly gorgeous and convincing: Vesta Sweetwater's virgin-song looks completely different and is shot in a completely different fashion to the Bacchanalia surrounding it. It is ethereally beautiful, in contrast to the ugliness around it, because it is a direct expression of a Roman founding myth. From the opposite side of the film's conflict, I found the scenes with Driver on various rooftops to be completely transporting and convincing. You feel (or, well, I felt) perfectly his fear of and difficulty in expressing his great vision, and are(/were/was) astonished by the occasional but stunning use of his magic power. Megalon is an aesthetically ideal substance, as multivariate and beautiful as it is useful. Vesta Sweetwater demonstrates how it "goes with anything" before it's ever used to build a building. I know that a lot of this paragraph is "but I found it compelling," but I think there's more to Coppola's method towards effects-driven filmmaking than what most profit-minded effects-heavy films can contain (for the dreamier parts of this film, what other comparison even exists but Twin Peaks: The Return?). It's a real shame to me that this film is attracting pejorative comparisons to the Wachowskis or Prequels-era George Lucas, as in truth it finds a substance in its maximalism that those filmmakers never achieve.

I should conclude. Megalopolis is the best ideas-and-effects-laden extravaganza that the 2000s (n)ever produced. See this movie early and often. I'll grant you that the title cards looked kind of ugly.

[therewillbeblus]

I really liked the film too, and have little to add to Never Cursed's very insightful post. Maybe this sounds weird amidst the clear Roman influences, but I was reminded most of Gotham City and all its sociopolitical dynamics and even specific characters, in a kind of incredibly experimental Batman movie throughout. Almost certainly not intended, but not a dis either

Anyways, Jason Schwartzman and Jon Voight were the MVPs - both an absolute riot to watch. Yes, it's incredibly sincere, but boy is it self-consciously hysterical as well

[Red Screamer]

Apparently this will only occur in screenings labeled as “the Immersive IMAX Experience”

I wouldn't be surprised if this is different than the "Megalopolis: the Ultimate Experience" in IMAX I just got a ticket for, but since that's the only non-standard screening available in my city, we will see.

I guess it’s not different, since the spoiler’ed thing happened but

Spoiler

it was only one question, and it was already dubbed into the soundtrack, so either this section has been abridged from the version that played at Cannes or early reactions blew this element out of proportion. I’d bet on the former.

What a strange and, yes, funny film. In its dry, self-conscious absurdity, Adam Nayman was onto something in comparing it to David Wain, in addition to the baroque Fellini side more people are talking about. I’ll have to see it again before I can share thoughts that approach Never Cursed’s lucidity (a great read), but there are some really creative elements here, particularly visually, that pulled me through even as it fatigued me in soaring further and further into narrative symbolism without much connective tissue, to the degree that I had trouble understanding what was going on in the back third as story threads are put on fast forward in order to payoff without clear motivation.

The completely artificial acting style and dialogue (speechifying, very written jokes, asides, and on-the-nose announcements of what’s going on as it’s happening) are the type of thing huge swaths of audiences won’t ever go for, so I’m not surprised by the hate or those who are trying to camp it up. And that’s before we get into the vaguely defined, tech genius idealism which will rub people the wrong way, and not without reason.

[thirtyframesasecond]

So what seems to be trending already is Adam Driver's line "so go back to the cluuuuuuub"

[domino harvey]

Affirm your support in t-shirt form

[Peter-H]

Thank you Never Cursed for your very thoughtful reply, and I’m glad the movie worked so much more for you more than it did for me.

“Yes! I'd go so far as to say that both are straightforward jokes with contextually communicated setups and punchlines. In the former case, LaBeouf is goofing around with his partner-in-crime about a disguise, but underneath that is a subversion of the character's heretofore arch-masculine approach. He hates Adam Driver so much that he'll debase his Roman virtus (in his eyes, and also in a certain sense in the eyes of the film) for revenge.”

I do appreciate you explaining this to me. I supposed it would have clicked more if the movie had given an explanation for why Shia Labeouf's character hates Adam Driver so much. His hatred of Driver seems to pre-date the events of the film, and it’s the foundation for his entire character arc and large parts of the story, yet it’s never really explained. This is true of many elements of the story, which are not set up or explained in a proper way.

I think the two major elements of the film's approach that cause it to fail to land for so many people (it seems yourself included) are its simultaneous contempt for conservatism, abstracted in the nightmare cartoon vision of modern elite culture with a Roman makeover, and its equally earnest and sentimental depiction of progressivism, which Coppola conjures as a force so perfect and powerful that it can bestow actual superpowers.

Spoiler

If the movie is supposed to be a celebration of progressivism and an indictment of conservatism, then I think it totally fails. To my mind, the driving principle behind progressivism is a belief in equality and egalitarianism, whereas conservatives are more accepting of stratification and hierarchy. It doesn't seem like this fundamental philosophical dispute is addressed in the film. Is the distribution of resources more equal in Megalopolis? We're never told. At the end, it doesn't seem like the rich are made to give up their wealth for the sake of those who are less well off. The movie doesn't say how Megalopolis helps people. Instead, we're just supposed to accept that the mere existence of these buildings made of golden goop magically fixes all social problems. 

Perhaps we're supposed to assume that Megalopolis is some kind of post-scarcity utopia, but in that case the movie is a bad allegory for real world political conflicts. Such conflicts are, in large part, driven by the realities of scarcity. Resources are not unlimited, and so, as a society, we must debate questions about what distributions are just and unjust, what the benefits and drawbacks of different distributions are, and so on. In the context of the film, Megalopolis renders these questions irrelevant. 

This is the problem with trying to make a political allegory where one character wants to build a perfect utopia that will fix all problems forever, and the other character is against doing that for seemingly no reason. I don't even agree with you that the mayor is motivated by personal gain, because it seems that by the end of the movie, we're supposed to understand that he wants what's best for the city but just had a different idea about how best to help it (but again, the movie never explains what that different idea is). This is demonstrated at the end when he's convinced of Ceaser's perspective by a single platitude-filled speech. I guess he was always basically a good guy who just needed to be brought around.

I did laugh at this tweet earlier today, because it does sum up how the movie's attempts at social commentary come off to me:

https://x.com/fellawhomstdve/status/1840385831137108261

[Never Cursed]

I do appreciate you explaining this to me. I supposed it would have clicked more if the movie had given an explanation for why Shia Labeouf's character hates Adam Driver so much. His hatred of Driver seems to pre-date the events of the film, and it’s the foundation for his entire character arc and large parts of the story, yet it’s never really explained. This is true of many elements of the story, which are not set up or explained in a proper way.

I actually know this because of my high school Latin - it's sort of a carry-over from the real ancient Roman counterparts of the two characters. Without getting too far into the weeds of things, Catiline (Driver) and Clodius Pulcher (LaBeouf) were both elite politicians in the final decades of the Republic who competed for power and met violent ends at the hands of their enemies (in separate and unrelated instances). Esposito's character is a parallel of famed statesman and orator Cicero, who hated both Catiline and Clodius.

Spoiler

The Grace Vanderwaal plotline is loosely based upon Clodius' prosecution of a real Vestal Virgin for alleged sexual involvement with Catiline, charges that Clodius may have invented. Clodius was also a reactionary and proto-populist figure that used his bought support of the downtrodden for personal gain. And finally, the ending as it exists in the leaked 2000s script for this film much more closely parallels the violent ending of the real Catiline conspiracy, with Driver dead and his plans unrealized.

While having this knowledge provides context and color for these characters and their actions, I don't think you need to know anything about them for the events of the film to make sense - Esposito is a traditionally conservative elite, while LaBeouf is a disgusting force of populist reaction. Even if I didn't know who these figures were, I found the film's communication of their basic motivations and relationships quite intuitive. Most of the main characters are divided into three factions that fight with each other - on the whole the setup is no more complicated than Dune's.

Spoiler

If the movie is supposed to be a celebration of progressivism and an indictment of conservatism, then I think it totally fails. To my mind, the driving principle behind progressivism is a belief in equality and egalitarianism, whereas conservatives are more accepting of stratification and hierarchy. It doesn't seem like this fundamental philosophical dispute is addressed in the film. Is the distribution of resources more equal in Megalopolis? We're never told. At the end, it doesn't seem like the rich are made to give up their wealth for the sake of those who are less well off. The movie doesn't say how Megalopolis helps people. Instead, we're just supposed to accept that the mere existence of these buildings made of golden goop magically fixes all social problems. 

Perhaps we're supposed to assume that Megalopolis is some kind of post-scarcity utopia, but in that case the movie is a bad allegory for real world political conflicts. Such conflicts are, in large part, driven by the realities of scarcity. Resources are not unlimited, and so, as a society, we must debate questions about what distributions are just and unjust, what the benefits and drawbacks of different distributions are, and so on. In the context of the film, Megalopolis renders these questions irrelevant. 

This is the problem with trying to make a political allegory where one character wants to build a perfect utopia that will fix all problems forever, and the other character is against doing that for seemingly no reason. I don't even agree with you that the mayor is motivated by personal gain, because it seems that by the end of the movie, we're supposed to understand that he wants what's best for the city but just had a different idea about how best to help it (but again, the movie never explains what that different idea is). This is demonstrated at the end when he's convinced of Ceaser's perspective by a single platitude-filled speech. I guess he was always basically a good guy who just needed to be brought around.

I did laugh at this tweet earlier today, because it does sum up how the movie's attempts at social commentary come off to me:

https://x.com/fellawhomstdve/status/1840385831137108261

Well, that tweet is certainly not inaccurate, and it is funny, but I find it symptomatic of a cruelty that is at the heart of some of the negative responses to the film. Cesar's invocation of Marcus Aurelius in that scene is just as much a platitude as Julia's and Cicero's, but he draws additional power in doing so by using the seemingly contradictory words of the arch-stoic philosopher against Cicero's own. Esposito is flummoxed in that scene because Driver has emphasized to him and to his family how consciously political his choices of philosophical lenses are, how the end of conservatism is the reason why he uses the means of Marcus Aurelius to support it. It is an epistemological attack on conservatism. The sources of knowledge conservatism holds to be immovable and constant, the film says, in fact contain nuance and contradiction and ultimately can be read in different ways. One of the great strengths of Megalopolis, for me at least, is that it trusts the audience over and over again to not get bogged down by the (enormous) weight of its invocations and seize upon their narrative and dramatic function. Many of the people who say they "don't get it" or find its use of complex imagery "shallow" are really, at least I think, signaling that they aren't willing to think about the purpose of these elements. (Though to be clear I don't think you're doing this, I'm more referring to people like that Twitter user).

Spoiler

That said, a lot of the rest of your spoilered response still confuses me for a simple reason - Cesar is absolutely committed to the idea of increased equality. It's there in the text, in what he says. It is another element that is spoken of rather quickly for allegorical and associative purposes (and it probably would have done the movie well to underline the point some more, given how many Twitter users I've seen confused about it), but one reason he wants to make Megalopolis is to offer everyone who lives in it beautiful and spacious housing, complete with a garden for all. Not only would this entail (both in the film and in real life) a colossal redistribution of wealth, it is particularly compelling in both the Roman and New York context, as the question of housing and the cost of living was/is a large political debate upended by the undemocratic control of public works. The idea in the end receives critical financial support from Jon Voight, who is reeling from the betrayal of his reactionary offspring, making its construction a fait accompli and compelling Cicero to accept it as such. (He doesn't actually have a "different idea" about how to help the city, he just thinks that Megalopolis is bad because it would harm his interests - the film's inability to present Cicero's "competing ideas" for urban planning is intentional). The movie's pledge of allegiance at the end even explicitly includes "equality" among the things that the new society will provide all.

[relaxok]

Personally, I had a great time.

I loved the film’s marrying of high mindedness with sloppy obscenity. The colosseum scene was particularly good.

I didn’t like the long scenes of back and forth dialogue between two people, but the scenes with more energy and invention were a blast. I felt like you usually have no idea what the next thing out of someone’s mouth would be. Wild script.

[captveg]

The most memorable thing to me were a couple of the montage sequences, which I thought used multi-panels rather well as part of presenting some imagery that actually moved me emotionally. The rest was unfortunately underwhelming to my tastes, though I can absolutely see the appeal of some of the campy, memed moments such as "Go back to the club."

I'm still grateful he got to make the film and I got to see it, even if I didn't enjoy the film as much as I'd hoped. I want more bold swings from filmmakers these days when the studios are so cripplingly risk averse.

[domino harvey]

This film reminded me a lot, unexpectedly, of Beatty's Rules Don't Apply: Troubled production by outre talent with poor public perception and general boondoggle vibes abounding. Like that film, I find this one interesting in its peculiarity. After Aloha, I've learned to not expect too much from any filmmaker's long gestating passion project, but this film seems spectacularly incoherent on a narrative level. I don't think this truth is inescapable, but it's also not strictly detrimental to its success. Just an observation. The complaint that plot threads are abandoned and discarded and other threads given weight unsupported by what came prior is fair and true. I suspect Coppola cut a lot of material and this is just where the pieces landed this time and this cut. If he lives long enough and finds a company willing to release it, I'm sure we'll eventually see a much different future cut of this.

Not that I want to devote too much time to legitimizing the Razzies, but that the best actor here was nominated as the worst and the worst actor here was absent shows they probably didn't even watch this before voting for it. I've liked him not at all in other works but Shia LaBeouf is perfect as the scumbag wild card cousin, and I don't really know how anyone could watch this movie and think he's one of the worst aspects of it, even if you hated this thing. Conversely, even though many of the actors in this started in TV as well, Nathalie Emmanuel is a disaster and so far out of her depths or abilities that it's second-hand embarrassing-- legit one of the worst performances I've ever seen, and she is functionally the second lead. Coppola should have spent whatever it took extra to pause the production to wait for Zendaya, or anyone who could act. Also quite good: Voight as the doddering fool patriarch and Plaza as the oversexed schemer. The rest of the cast appeared in the film.

Beyond stray observations, I'm a bit at a loss on how to even assess this. I think it's a failure as a narrative film. As a catalog of wild images arranged into some kind of shape, it has more merit. About an hour into the film there's a sequence of twenty minutes or so involving the concert at the new Colosseum that feels like everything is finally coming together into something great, but then it never even remotely reaches these highs again. I loved Never Cursed's appreciation, and perhaps one day I'll agree with more of it. I will concede that there's a lot going on here and subsequent viewings could adjust my appreciation. Or maybe I should have just taken an edible before watching

[Never Cursed]

Hmm, I could never fault anyone for becoming exasperated with the film or simply not seeing what I see, but the process of reconstructing the narrative throughline from this movie's overflowing font of statement, suggestion, influence, and mad connection has been one of the best experiences I've had with a movie in a very long time, like up there with At Long Last Love and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort. I'm anxious for a couple reasons about a future longer cut. One absolutely exists: one of the film's editors alluded to a longer "director's cut" in the press material for the film's Cannes premiere, the Internet Archive hosts a leaked screenplay, identical in many pieces of dialogue and details but also divergent from the film in several spots (and with a completely different ending), and of course many scenes in the film that were clearly shot through as full scenes are only presented as snippets in a montage (to say nothing of the Olivia Rodrigo spoof Grace Vanderwaal put together that was only briefly excerpted in another montage). While I would obviously want to see a longer version very badly, I have to imagine that any serious effort to extend the movie would run into the question of whether the omitted material had VFX work completed or not - unlike with so many of Coppola's earlier films, one might not just be able to insert the material again, and I don't imagine anyone is rushing to invest money in a longer version of the film (at least, not until I strike it rich). And if you were able to, I'd also wonder if some of the hyper-edited, almost hypnotic montages, like Driver's dreamlike encounter with his wife, might not be better in their present form. That said, there are several sequences in the film that are clearly missing material or would otherwise benefit from more explanation or duration in general

Spoiler

(the disaster material, for starters)

Not that I want to devote too much time to legitimizing the Razzies, but that the best actor here was nominated as the worst and the worst actor here was absent shows they probably didn't even watch this before voting for it. I've liked him not at all in other works but Shia LaBeouf is perfect as the scumbag wild card cousin, and I don't really know how anyone could watch this movie and think he's one of the worst aspects of it, even if you hated this thing. Conversely, even though many of the actors in this started in TV as well, Nathalie Emmanuel is a disaster and so far out of her depths or abilities that it's second-hand embarrassing-- legit one of the worst performances I've ever seen, and she is functionally the second lead. Coppola should have spent whatever it took extra to pause the production to wait for Zendaya, or anyone who could act. Also quite good: Voight as the doddering fool patriarch and Plaza as the oversexed schemer. The rest of the cast appeared in the film.

While I certainly agree with you that LaBeouf turns in the best performance (and both he and Plaza should have gotten Oscar nominations for their big scene together, which they came up with themselves), I think Driver is right behind him and I wish more of the highly positive professional notices of the movie said so. Many actors have come and gone from the role over the years, but I can't imagine that Nicolas Cage or Oscar Isaac could have been so perfectly terrified, could have used their weird confidence so effectively as a distraction from their terror. Nathalie Emmanuel's is... a harder performance to defend, and I also wish (selfishly) that it could have been Zendaya there, but I think part of the problem is that she's using a really broad Noo Yawk accent for most of the movie and so just sounds more labored (making, for instance, her "Fine. I will." in response to Adam Driver's big meme-line a lot harsher). Even then, she still gets a great exchange in her scene with Romy Mars AKA "Make a vodka sauce pasta with me because I'm grounded after chartering a helicopter..."

Spoiler

-"Is it better to look good or smell good?"
-"Uh, I think both?"

I might need to stop thinking about this movie.

[aox]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie ... 236207923/

Coppola is taking it on the road and has no plans to release it to streaming services or physical media. I'm not sure I am ever going to see this which sucks.

[beamish14]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie ... 236207923/

Coppola is taking it on the road and has no plans to release it to streaming services or physical media. I'm not sure I am ever going to see this which sucks.

There is a European Blu-Ray that even includes a commentary

I’m still waiting on the Mike Figgis documentary!

[hearthesilence]

Hah! Wonder how they forgot that detail?

That aside, he's certainly not the first filmmaker to (sort of) do this - experimental filmmakers (like Michael Snow and until recently James Benning) often have that policy and Larry Clark does the same with Passing Through.

[domino harvey]

Crispin Glover as well. And Coppola’s own Twixt was initially envisioned as an interactive touring event with live music by Dan Deacon and real time re-editing of the film

[colinr0380]

Speaking of Mike Figgis, didn't he also envision touring Timecode and doing jazz-style on the fly remixes of it?

[beamish14]

Hah! Wonder how they forgot that detail?

That aside, he's certainly not the first filmmaker to (sort of) do this - experimental filmmakers (like Michael Snow and until recently James Benning) often have that policy and Larry Clark does the same with Passing Through.

I think Passing Through also stems from music rights issues, correct?

[beamish14]

Crispin Glover as well. And Coppola’s own Twixt was initially envisioned as an interactive touring event with live music by Dan Deacon and real time re-editing of the film

I heard that Glover is an unbelievable pain in that ass to deal with when you book his self-distributed films.

[beamish14]

Speaking of Mike Figgis, didn't he also envision touring Timecode and doing jazz-style on the fly remixes of it?

An idea sort-of explored in the terribly received Bob Gale-directed Mr. Payback from 1995

[swo17]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie ... 236207923/

Coppola is taking it on the road and has no plans to release it to streaming services or physical media. I'm not sure I am ever going to see this which sucks.

I like the correction at the bottom of this article, which I will uncharitably summarize as follows: "We printed that Candace Owens has denied the Holocaust. She has not in fact denied that the Holocaust took place. She just thinks there was nothing wrong with it."

[hearthesilence]

Hah! Wonder how they forgot that detail?

That aside, he's certainly not the first filmmaker to (sort of) do this - experimental filmmakers (like Michael Snow and until recently James Benning) often have that policy and Larry Clark does the same with Passing Through.

I think Passing Through also stems from music rights issues, correct?

It's not the reason Clark gives, or at least he didn't when he was here a few years ago at MoMA. Someone asked him this question and he simply said he wants people to see it in a theater where the presentation is at its best, adding that he has no incentive to squeeze out any revenue from home viewing because it's a very low budget art film.

[aox]

I like the correction at the bottom of this article, which I will uncharitably summarize as follows: "We printed that Candace Owens has denied the Holocaust. She has not in fact denied that the Holocaust took place. She just thinks there was nothing wrong with it."

[Never Cursed]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie ... 236207923/

Coppola is taking it on the road and has no plans to release it to streaming services or physical media. I'm not sure I am ever going to see this which sucks.

There is a European Blu-Ray that even includes a commentary

I’m still waiting on the Mike Figgis documentary!

Apparently Figgis is mostly done with editing and intends to show the documentary (presently titled "MegaDoc") on this year's festival circuit, though he is hampered by the small detail of Adam Driver telling him to cut out every frame with him in it from the doc. George Lucas and Eleanor Coppola are in it