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Late in \u201cMegalopolis<\/a>,\u201d Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s plaintively hopeful movie about \u2014 well, everything under the sun \u2014 a character speaks to the power of love. It\u2019s a wistful moment in a fascinating film aswirl with wild visions, lofty ideals, cinematic allusions, literary references, historical footnotes and self-reflexive asides, all of which Coppola has funneled into a fairly straightforward story about a man with a plan. It is a great big plan from a great big man in a great big movie, one whose sincerity is finally as moving as its unbounded artistic ambition.<\/p>\n \u201cMegalopolis,\u201d which had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival<\/a> on Thursday, is Coppola\u2019s first movie since \u201cTwixt\u201d (2011), a little-seen, small-scale horror fantasy. \u201cMegalopolis\u201d is far larger in every respect, though at this point it\u2019s an open question whether it will reach an audience of any kind. The industry, never a welcoming place for free-ranging and -thinking artists, is in the midst of another of its cyclical freakouts. Business is terrible and the sky is definitely, absolutely falling. Fear, panic and timidity rule the day, as they generally do.<\/p>\n And then there is a recent report in The Guardian<\/a> with anonymous sources alleging that Coppola tried to kiss female extras. The executive producer Darren Demetre has said, \u201cI was never aware of any complaints of harassment or ill behavior during the course of the project\u201d and described the contact as \u201ckind hugs and kisses on the cheek to the cast and background players.\u201d<\/p>\n I thought about these allegations every so often while watching \u201cMegalopolis,\u201d particularly during one of the bacchanals that punctuate the story and especially when yet another semi-covered breast waggled onscreen. I didn\u2019t find the breasts scandalous or remotely offensive; for one thing, the movie is a speculative fiction about a city that more or less looks like New York, if one modeled on ancient Rome. There the city\u2019s wealthy citizens scheme, the poor suffer and a visionary architect, Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), dreams of a \u201cperfect school-city\u201d in which everyone can become who they were meant to be.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The movie follows Catilina pondering his mortality atop what looks like the Chrysler Building. After gingerly crawling outside on a ledge, he gazes over the city and raises a foot in the air, then freezes as if contemplating the abyss. This apparent to-be-or-not-to-be moment initiates a story that finds him wrestling with imponderables, having anguished meltdowns and trying to realize his utopian project using a building material he has invented as he navigates assorted hurdles. Among the most persistent is the imperious mayor, Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who has a beautiful daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), a party girl who can quote the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius<\/a> by heart.<\/p>\n The plot thickens quickly as characters enter and exit delivering lines that, by turns, sound like everyday speech (well, almost) and as formally structured (and antiquated) as Shakespearean prose. The performance styles are similarly varied though rarely do they align with the kind of natural-seeming psychological realism that\u2019s so familiar. There\u2019s a heightened aspect to many of them; every so often, Driver tips into old-school Method-esque intensity while other actors push in separate directions. You can almost see the quotation marks hovering around Aubrey Plaza\u2019s wonderfully sly performance as a TV celebrity called Wow Platinum, while Shia LaBeouf goes full-on court fool as Clodio, Catilina\u2019s cousin.<\/p>\n It admittedly took me awhile to get accustomed to both the dialogue and the performances, which while not exactly alienating did feel destabilizing. I soon got into Coppola\u2019s groove, though, and stayed there more or less, despite my exasperation with his stubbornly old-fashioned ideas about women and men and my deep skepticism about technological determinism. Even so, while I have my doubts about Catilina\u2019s vision, Coppola\u2019s own pleasure in playing with a digital toolbox is fun to watch. Unsurprisingly, the results are often striking, like the image of Catilina and Julia kissing while precariously perched on metal girders that are floating high above the ground or the picture of a futuristic city whose flowing organic forms recall the work of the brilliant architect Zaha Hadid.<\/p>\n From the moment Catilina appears atop his world, his foot frozen above the void and seemingly ready to take a great leap, it\u2019s clear that \u201cMegalopolis\u201d \u2014 a dream that Coppola has been dreaming for some 40 years \u2014 is no ordinary movie. It too is a great leap, a formally and visually audacious experiment that feels like the work of a filmmaker who, rather than repeating himself ad infinitum or resting on his countless laurels, remains excited by moving pictures and their infinite possibilities. I don\u2019t think \u201cMegalopolis\u201d will be for everyone, but art rarely is. In 1895, the film pioneer Louis Lumi\u00e8re apparently said that the cinema was \u201can invention without a future,\u201d a comment that\u2019s been repeated in one way or another ever since; in 2024, and against all odds, Coppola dares to insist that it has one.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n