Colossus on megalon legs

The main event of the Cannes Film Festival - Megalopolis - the new fantastic epic of Francis Ford Coppola

MIF film, MEGALON FILL. This is such a synthetic material from utopia. It seems to be possible. But unattainable. As a movie of the future. The 85-year-old creator of the Apocalypse Today and the Cross Father dared to remove him.

My music teacher loved to repeat in case of inconsistency of the plan and result: "The mountain gave birth to a mouse." In the case of Megalopolis, we can say: “The mountain gave birth to a mountain”, and the director-megaloman introduced the audience into a fuss, indignation, disappointment, and delight. I do not remember such a radical rupture of reactions and assessments. From a seven -minute applause at the premiere to the "BU" and the applause of critics.

The legendary Coppola presented his dream of dreams as Working Progress back in 2001 here in Cannes. And he wrote a 400-page scenario of the project as early as 1983.

40 years of thought, samples. The first frames were shot in the 90s. How many times I rewritten, launched. Contracts with already withdrawing actors were broken, objects were redeemed. Coppola shot a film with his own funds - $ 120 million.

The director put everything on the card: money (though they do not need to be returned), ambition. He created his sweeping cinema for IMAX as a muralist. Having mixed up on canvas quotes and references to Mark Aurelius, Safo, Petrarch, Goethe, Wellsu and Ralph Wuldo Emerson. Personal pain associated with the loss of his wife, whom he devoted to the picture. At some point, the hero, instead of public speech, simply pronounces Hamlet's monologue. It seems that on behalf of the author: “To fall asleep! And to see dreams, maybe? Here it is! What are the dreams of the death of the mortal, we will only shake the shell - this is what holds us ... ”And at another moment, the author generally destroys the distance between the character and the viewer, as if tearing the screen ...

And before us, uneven cinema with the Wagnerian shirt, not too clever computer graphics, offset romance, curious philosophical thoughts and banal maxims about the chance of mankind, the very existence of a miracle of miracles - for the future. But instead of the future, a person prefers to kill, capture, win at all costs in monkey skin. Therefore, the death of civilization is inevitably approaching. Love will save the world? And we did not know.

The actors in their place, like Adam Driver in the title role of an architect, depending on the abyss with his desperate manic idea of ​​the reconstruction of the world. Or do not know what to do and why are they here, like Dustin Hoffman (perhaps his role simply did not enter the screen version, remaining in the 30-hour material shot for the film?). They all play in different manner: from excessive theatricality to verified psychologism.

At the same time, a whole scattering of amazing details (like roses hung in the air - a symbol of the stopped time ...). Instructive historical parallels. America postmodern, corrupted and ambitious, like ancient Rome - an empire that does not feel the crisis moment, the smell of death ... the very one from which the collapse and destruction begins.

All empires are blind. Deprived of smell. All are perverted with greed, consumerism and corruption, crave blood and spectacles, destroy from the inside.

In the retro-futuristic New York genius, the Nobel laureate of the Nobel Prize, the architect Caesar Katilina invented the miraculous building material Megalon. Now he hopes to build a “Golden City under the Blue Heaven”, a sword city, a shining paradise. Thanks to the discovery of the new substance, Katilin can control time and space. He has already begun work on the projects of the New Rome, demolishing whole quarters. But the imperious Cicero tries to stop him. And why build utopia, after which anti -utopia will certainly come?

And why, at the age of 85, you will shoot films, which will be absolutely reproached for naivety, awkwardness and clumsiness, in chaos instead of dramaturgy, children's romanticism. Why build a film as a giant skyscraper, in which all styles will be strangely combined: from the Roman imperial composite to Ar-Deco and Haytek. Giant colossus on clay legs? But Koppola has a quotes from his beloved Marcus Aurelius in his pocket for all occasions: “A person should not be afraid of death, he must never start living.”

The plot rhymes of this modernist peplum are associated with the famous Catilin conspiracy exposed by a publicly eloquent Caesar. Like the Roman politician, the driver of the driver is accused of the mayor of New York of the murder of his wife. But he cannot part with her, continuing - already with the invisible - gently communicate, buy her flowers. The aging mayor of the city, the ossified conservative of Cicero (Dzhancarlo Esposito), holds onto the chair, is more afraid of death. The daughter of the mayor Julia (Natalie Emmanuel) falls in love with Catilin's charismatics. The cunning banker Hamilton Crassus III (John Voit) with Trump's intonations and sparkling eyes is obsessed with sex and power, and under his cloak arrows for “close enemies” were stocked. Of the most striking characters, his corrupted grandson Claudio (Shaya Labaf) is Major and Sneak, who hate Caesar, intending to get rid of the obsolete grandfather in any way and be confused by a new dictator, raising crowds to the assault on the current rusty power. And the Soviet Space Station floats over the city, threatening nuclear waste.

No, Koppol did not invent a new movie, he only tried to steal the old forms, and as a genuine romantic he believes in the artist’s ability to ask essential questions. At least set.

“As long as there are questions and dialogue ... This is utopia,” says Caesar in the final, while there is utopia, there is hope. So far, there are risk directors - Jedi related to cinema as a way to fight with the mills of the film industry, involved exclusively on money, are able to irritate, make mistakes, arouse zealous disputes and dialogs - the cinema has a chance of survival. As one of the characters in the film repeats: "When we jump into the unknown, we prove that we are free."

And even if this is a personal statement, the AUTOPORT FILL will tolerate the full fiasco at the box office, it will cause anger of a noble audience-a similar failure is a million times more interesting, rewriting each other by tracing paper blockbusters.

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