An fly-on-the-Wall documentary about making a movie of $ 120 million that no one saw and even fewer people liked, Mike Figgis’ “Megadoc” – Shots at Fayetteville, Georgia set of Francis Ford Coppolas”Megalopolis“-Crides with all the fines in a DVD bonus function and makes some effort to contextualize their images for anyone who is not already on the first name with immortal characters like Clodio Pulcher and Wow Platinum. Dick.) But don’t let it prevent you from looking at it.
Yes, it is true that I belong to the little cohort of critics who were charmed by the childish optimism of Coppola’s greatest folly. And no, my feelings about “megalopolis” -When I looked like the strangely eGoless self-portrait for an eccentric genius that dared to stick its fortune on a more optimistic vision of the future-has not decreased since filmHumiliation Ritual of a release, although public opinion on the film has somehow worsened over the past 15 months.
I do not mention all this as a pride (it is not), but rather to determine where I come from when I claim that Figgis’ Doc – uneven and unpolished as it is – confirms what I thought so important about “megalopolis” while illustrating why it was still a singular train crime.
“Cinema is the only art that kills what it is trying to preserve,” explains Coppola, and the last 30 years of its career – begins with “one from the heart”, but much including “Jack” – has stammered from his efforts to catch it Thing Without spinning it. Creating a cinema that does not feel like a consequence of taxidermiated images. According to his mind, films are so morbid because people approach them as work; as fossilization rather than creation. “Toil gives you nothing,” he explains sometime during the long and crazy rehearsal process for “Megalopolis.” “Games give you everything.”
But at what cost? It is no secret that Coppola invested a wealth of their own money to finance this film and to buy itself the luxury to do so on its own terms. The prospectus scares him when he admits to his late wife Eleanor in a short pictures with pictures that Figgis includes from before shooting (it is suitable to “Megadoc“Starts and ends as a tribute to the director of the largest Coppola-in-the-crisis documentary ever made), but as Jacques Tati once said:” Who cares if you died broke if you put all your money into something you think is beautiful? ”
Many people, it turns out. Made in the face of an industry that is so suffocated by its creative life blood as a movie lovers has begun to evaluate films such as auditors, “Megalopolis” should have been received with the grace in an undesirable gift, but most pounds were more interested in the reception. I can’t confuse anyone for rolling the eyes of such a clumsy, stylish and unmatched sincere technical that feels like it has been heated in the microwave – or 100 – many times since Coppola started thinking about it in 1983, but I was saddened by the pure hostility that greeted the clean idea of a self -financed passion project, as if it were Gauche and embarrassing for a revered author to sink back his wine money in art without any real hope of recovering their investment. “What currency am I paid in?”, Asks Coppola a warring Shia Labeouf. The actor guesses “love.” The correct answer was “fun”.
The movies have always been incomprehensible from the cost of making them, but what can it look like if they were not? The collective eagerness to mock only the existence of “megalopolis” leads me to suspect that most may not really want to know the answer. “When we jump into the unknown,” said the big Cesar Catilina once, “We prove we are free.” The problem with freedom is, of course, that it reveals our limitations, which can be extremely frustrating in their own right. Games give you everything – including a new type of wear completely.
“Megadoc” does not offer any kind of who is or what is what people are not already familiar with Coppola’s movie, and I can’t pretend to imagine how Figgi’s documentary can be for people who do not know how “megalopolis” is about, but I suspect it still manages to resolve as a wide fascinating look at full fee, but I only suspect, but I only suspect, but I only suspect, but I only suspect, Toll-not only on the wall, but I suspect it still manages to solve as a wide fascinating look at full fee of film-not just on the wall.
There is the Octogenic Francis Ford Coppola, and discusses Giddily de Days Inn which he bought as a production base and fortunately incorrectly quotes Dante to his role on the first day of their open rehearsal process (“abandon worry All of you who come in here, “insists the director). There is Wow Platinum himself Aubrey Plaza who plays a kind of Improv game with Dustin” Nush “Hoffman and Nathalie Emmanuel. Of his recovery process; this will be the only time the movie refers to incidents from the case of sexual deductions, even if it seems also a seven, even seven sects. female extra without their consent.
“Megalopolis” is one of the films that feels like it offers an exact window behind the scenes in its own creation process, and “Megadoc” confirms just as much without ever becoming superfluous. Everyone on site for rehearsal seems happy to be there, although no one knows exactly where “where” can be. Although the project had gestures for so many decades, the pictures clear that Coppola was still most animated by the discovery, and that he was eager to run with one of the enthusiasm that his collaborators brought with him to the table.
The specifications on how it worked largely is left to the imagination (“megadoc” is curious short and spread for a documentary that must have been released from countless hours with pictures), but Mad Circus -Vibe comes through high and clear. Everyone seems to be high on “Does it really happen?” Of all, especially the department heads, who seem equally happy and nervous about the extent of the job.
Similarly, almost no one seems to be disturbed by the presence of Figgis’ Nikon Z8 Camera, as if there is a common agreement that it would be wrong not To record the creation of a movie that has been struggling to get off the ground for so long. (“Megadoc” contains several clips from previous table readings and test shots, which have Robert De Niro and a young Ryan Gosling.) Adam Driver is the only person who may have been uncomfortable with intrusion; A non-presence until the end of the documentary, his development makes “Megadoc” feel significantly less than its title can mean.
Things become much more volatile when the actual shot begins and Coppola’s Willy Wonka-like charm-as Plaza describes it-tested by the requirements to realize their crazy vision once and for all. And through the demands to work with Shia Labeouf, whose method depends on adopting its director at every tour. Shooting “Apocalypse Now” was a field day compared to the challenge of getting Labeouf to accept the blockage of a simple dialogue scene, and Coppola – whose outbreak of anger and subsequent retreat to his air current flight on the spirit that I have tried to grow on set – eventually sowing that I have “the largest labeouf Wonder if he has become too old and cruel for this type of work, which is a crushing thing to ask for someone who has done everything in their power to make it feel like a game.
There are still rules, even within the ultimate freedom. Actors still need guidance, bills still have to be paid and personal limits must still be respected. But looking at “megadoc” is to appreciate why “megalopolis” feels more important than so many other films, and also why it feels completely without control at the same time. It is to understand how a legendary author can march all its power and personal economy against the ultimate investment in the future of its art form, just because it would feel like a charity act – which everyone who participated in the project just did it to humor him. It is to understand that “megalopolis” was less for his story than for its Schrödinger-like ability to formulate why the films feel so alive even when they die, and also why they feel so dead even when there is still so much life in the people who make them.
Rating: B.
“Megadoc” premiered at 2025 Venice Film festival. Utopia will release it in the United States.
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