A fly-on-the-wall documentary concerning the making of an $120 million film that no person noticed and even fewer folks preferred, Mike Figgis’ “Megadoc” — shot on the Fayetteville, Georgia set of Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” — boasts all of the fineries of a DVD bonus function, and makes little effort to contextualize its footage for anybody who isn’t already on a first-name foundation with immortal characters like Clodio Pulcher and Wow Platinum. (Each of whom have been solely immortal within the figurative sense, in fact, as the previous was hanged the other way up like Benito Mussolini, whereas the latter was killed by a crossbow that Jon Voight disguised as his dick.) However don’t let that cease you from watching it.
Sure, it’s true that I belong to the small cohort of critics who have been charmed by the childlike optimism of Coppola’s biggest folly. And no, my emotions about “Megalopolis” — which I noticed because the unusually egoless self-portrait of an eccentric genius who dared to stake his fortune on a extra optimistic imaginative and prescient of the long run — haven’t diminished for the reason that movie’s humiliation ritual of a launch, even when public opinion concerning the film has in some way gotten worse over the past 15 months.
I don’t point out all of that as some extent of delight (it’s not), however quite to determine the place I’m coming from once I argue that Figgis’ doc — patchy and unpolished as it’s — reaffirms what I discovered so important about “Megalopolis” concurrently it illustrates why it was nonetheless a singular trainwreck.
“Cinema is the one artwork that kills what it’s attempting to protect,” Coppola declares, and the final 30 years of his profession — beginning with “One from the Coronary heart,” however very a lot together with “Jack” — have stemmed from his efforts to seize that factor with out snuffing it out. To create a cinema that doesn’t really feel like a succession of taxidermied pictures. To his thoughts, films are so moribund as a result of folks strategy them as work; as fossilization quite than creation. “Toil provides you nothing,” he declares sooner or later through the lengthy and wacky rehearsal course of for “Megalopolis.” “Play provides you the whole lot.”
However at what price? It’s no secret that Coppola invested a fortune of his personal cash to fund this film, and to purchase himself the luxurious of creating it on his personal phrases. The prospect scares him, as he confesses to his late spouse Eleanor in a quick snippet of footage that Figgis contains from earlier than the shoot (it’s becoming that “Megadoc” begins and ends as a tribute to the director of the best Coppola-in-crisis documentary ever made), however as Jacques Tati as soon as stated: “Who cares should you died broke should you put all of your cash into one thing you suppose is gorgeous?”
Lots of people, it seems. Made within the face of an business so choked of its artistic lifeblood that movie-lovers have began evaluating movies like accountants, “Megalopolis” ought to have been obtained with the graciousness of an unsolicited reward, however most pundits have been extra solely within the receipt. I can’t begrudge anybody for rolling their eyes at such a clunky, garish, and unrelentingly honest technofable that feels prefer it’s been reheated within the microwave one — or 100 — too many instances since Coppola began fascinated with it in 1983, however I used to be saddened by the sheer hostility that greeted the mere concept of a self-funded ardour challenge, as if it have been gauche and embarrassing for a revered auteur to sink his wine a refund into artwork with none actual hope of recouping his funding. “What foreign money am I paid in?,” Coppola asks a combative Shia LaBeouf. The actor guesses “love.” The right response was “enjoyable.”
The flicks have at all times been inextricable from the price of making them, however what would possibly it appear like in the event that they weren’t? The collective eagerness to mock the mere existence of “Megalopolis” leads me to suspect that most individuals could probably not need to know the reply. “After we leap into the unknown,” the good Cesar Catilina as soon as stated, “we show that we’re free.” The difficulty with freedom, in fact, is that it exposes our limitations, which may be extremely irritating in its personal proper. Play provides you the whole lot — together with a brand new form of toil all its personal.
“Megadoc” doesn’t supply any form of who’s-who or what’s-what for individuals who aren’t already conversant in Coppola’s movie, and I can’t faux to think about what Figgis’ documentary could be like for individuals who don’t know what “Megalopolis” is about, however I believe that it nonetheless manages to resolve as a broadly fascinating have a look at the total toll of filmmaking — not simply on the pockets, but additionally on the soul.
There’s octogenarian Francis Ford Coppola, giddily discussing the Days Inn he purchased as a manufacturing base and fortunately misquoting Dante to his solid on the primary day of their open-ended rehearsal course of (“Abandon fear all ye who enter right here,” the director insists). There’s Wow Platinum herself Aubrey Plaza enjoying some form of improv sport with Dustin “Nush” Hoffman and Nathalie Emmanuel. There’s LaBeouf, trying malevolent with out eyebrows as he candidly discusses how he “fucked his entire life up” within the time since he first learn the script, and the way he needed to make amends to Jon Voight as a part of the ninth step of his restoration course of; this would be the solely time the movie alludes to incidents of sexual violence, although Figgis seems to incorporate the briefest of snippets from the shoot the place Coppola allegedly kissed feminine extras with out their consent.
“Megalopolis” is a type of films that feels prefer it gives an correct window behind the scenes of its personal creation course of, and “Megadoc” confirms as a lot with out ever changing into redundant. Everybody on location for rehearsal appears excited to be there, even when no person is aware of precisely the place “there” could be. Though the challenge had been gestating for therefore many many years, the footage makes clear that Coppola was nonetheless most animated by the fun of discovery, and that he was desirous to run with any of the keenness that his collaborators delivered to the desk.
The specifics of how that labored are largely left to the creativeness (“Megadoc” is curiously brief and scattershot for a documentary that should have been culled from untold hours of footage), however the mad circus vibe comes via loud and clear. Everybody appears to be excessive on the “is that this actually taking place?” of all of it, particularly the division heads, who seem equal components thrilled and nervous concerning the scale of the job at hand.
Likewise, virtually no person appears bothered by the presence of Figgis’ Nikon Z8 digital camera, as if there’s a communal settlement that it will be unsuitable not to file the making of a film that has been preventing to get off the bottom for therefore lengthy. (“Megadoc” contains a number of clips from earlier desk reads and take a look at shoots, which function the likes of Robert De Niro and a younger Ryan Gosling.) Adam Driver is the one one who could have been uncomfortable with the intrusion; a non-presence till the very finish of the documentary, his elusiveness makes “Megadoc” really feel significantly smaller than its title would possibly indicate.
Issues develop into significantly extra unstable when the precise shoot begins and Coppola’s Willy Wonka-like allure — as Plaza describes it — is put to the take a look at by the calls for of realizing his mad imaginative and prescient as soon as and for all. And by the calls for of working with Shia LaBeouf, whose methodology hinges upon antagonizing his director at each flip. Capturing “Apocalypse Now” was a area day in contrast with the problem of getting LaBeouf to simply accept the blocking of a easy dialogue scene, and Coppola — whose eruptions of anger and subsequent retreats to his Airstream RV fly within the face of the spirit he was attempting to domesticate on set — finally concedes that LaBeouf is “the largest fucking ache within the ass of any actor I’ve ever labored with.” Greater than that, Coppola is compelled to marvel if he’s develop into too previous and grouchy for this type of work, which is a crushing factor to ask for somebody who’s performed the whole lot in his energy to make it really feel like play.
There are nonetheless guidelines, even inside the final freedom. Actors nonetheless want path, payments nonetheless should be paid, and private boundaries nonetheless should be revered. However to look at “Megadoc” is to understand why “Megalopolis” feels extra important than so many different movies, and likewise why it feels fully uncontrolled on the similar time. It’s to grasp how a legendary auteur can marshal all of his energy and private funds in the direction of the final word guess on the way forward for his artwork type, just for it to really feel like an act of charity — like everybody who participated within the challenge was solely doing so to humor him. It’s to grasp that “Megalopolis” was riveting much less for its story than for its Schrödinger-like means to articulate why the films really feel so alive even whereas they’re dying, and likewise why they really feel so lifeless even when there’s nonetheless a lot life within the individuals who make them.
Grade: B
“Megadoc” premiered on the 2025 Venice Movie Competition. Utopia will launch it in america.
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