MEGALOPOLIS REVISITED - OFF TOPIC

There are times when a film requires multiple views to be comprehended properly, be it due to its density, its depth,  pace, a wide number of factors, including the context of the first viewing. Film Festivals are great venues, but sometimes they might manage a viewing experience: one can easily end up with 3-4 screenings back-to-back, or in the frenzy of appointments, events, and not have the sufficient mental energy or even the desire to properly dedicate thought to a film that, at first impact, could feel off putting.

Megalopolis is a prime example of this phenomenon. It is a film that is hard to accept if you've had two others in the morning, and have a couple more in the evening, and you'll unlikely have time to think about it in that context. But even an ordinary viewing experience will most likely leave rather clueless, even if it does have the advantage of allowing more thought to be given. The first impact of this film will be, inevitably, that of utter chaos, a form of chaos most would rather not embrace, that is easily mistakable for incoherence, for something that is lackluster, even if visually rather incredible.

It is this visual awe that might lead to want to take a second look at Megalopolis. And the second viewing will be a more conscious one, with the knowledge of what is the film's "vibe", its form of energy, its speed. The pacing, the cuts every two or three seconds are what make Coppola's latest masterpiece a turmoiling vortex of a film, but once one is in the eye of the storm, everything becomes much clearer. That same storyline which seemed incoherent becomes linear, with foreshadows so well hidden that they were invisible in the thread at first. The surreal oddities become so deliberate that it does not meet disdain. 

Cannes chose to present the full restoration of Napoleon by Abel Gance just a few days before Megalopolis. Having seen its reprise at the Cinematheque Française, the choice feels apt: it is somehow that same form of idiosyncrasy, that form of experimentalism that silent cinema had in the twenties, that Megalopolis looks at - without however forgetting about the advancements cinema has gone through since then, constructing a melange that makes the resulting film cryptic, (in)advertenly naive.

Megalopolis is a film designed in a way that it requires the viewer to be willing to give it a second chance. Maybe the first viewing already opened interest of some sort, even beyond the overall chaotic feeling, but the second time around, it feels like an illumination, a sudden revelation as to what the film is trying to comunicate. Truthfully, a bit tautological in this sense, it encourages a debate but on the nature of the film itself: Megalopolis the film is the utopia, it is the instrument for discussion, it is purposefully artificious and irrealistic. The sense of chaos has the purpose of outlining the unattainable quality of the utopia - otherwise, it would not be an Utopia.

It is clear now, that Megalopolis by Francis Ford Coppola is a masterpiece, only not in the immediate. It is a form of cinema that has not really been seen and probably will never be seen again, and that is how it must be, a monument to a desire of grandeur that cannot be achieved entirely.

READ THE CANNES REVIEW HERE