Megalopolis: The high-brow bullshit I enjoy
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by Blender Dumbass
Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".
Information or opinions might not be up to date.
There is a kind of very difficult film-style that is extremely complicated to do right, a kind of metaphorical, retro-futuristic, allegorically emotiono-political noir. I've seen many types of this done in such a surface level insane way that they are borderline unwatchable. A good example of this type of movie, which works to some extend, is Blender Foundation's Elephants Dream. But even that is so strange that you have to grind yourself through a strange feeling of something being not quite right when watching it. Megalopolis by Francis Ford Coppola seems like one that actually works. Which I consider to be a big achievement in cinematic science. ↩ Reply
The best way to think of Megalopolis is to imagine it being a dream. Not for the characters. Your dream. A lot of the things are intentionally making no sense. This is a trope of the genre. There are elements from modern times, like modern cities. There are elements from the 1920s and 1930s. Like some of the cars and outfits. There are elements from ancient Rome and other old civilizations. And elements of the future. All of those mixed together into something that could make sense only if it was a dream. ↩ Reply
I think the idea Francis had with bombarding this movie with so much stuff is to make the audience not really try to understand the story of the film, but rather focus on the message, on the allegories, on the political stuff. ↩ Reply
The film opens with an unexpected Hamlet, very well acted by Adam Driver. At first I thought it will only quote the "To be, or not to be, that is the question" line. But then it went on and on, "Whether tis nombler in the mind to suffer" and so on and so forth. I was pleasantly surprised. ↩ Reply
Shia LaBeouf plays, what I think is, an allegory on Trump, in this film. An angry opposition to Adam Driver's utopian views of Megalopolis, for the soul reason of him being Jealous that Nathalie Emmanuel's character apparently likes Adam Driver more than Shia LaBeouf. He goes all in to persuade the population that any "change" for the better is not good, because it upsets the status quo. ↩ Reply
The film has very interesting philosophical conversations and good argumentation techniques from the characters. One notable example would be a scene toward the middle where Nathalie Emmanuel's character used an argument against Megalopolis to spin it around and make it pro-Megalopolis when talking to Giancarlo Esposito's character. ↩ Reply
The film contains a very good observation of how sex is used as political weapon. A lot of the characters are a victim of Aubrey Plaza's character who you may know from Scott Pilgrim vs The World. Adam Driver's character ( being the good guy ) is a victim of a different kind. He doesn't yield to the manipulations of Aubrey Plaza. So the bad characters manufacture a public image assault on him claiming that he is a pedophile. An observation of this technique I already made in my article How They Made Freedom Illegal, with examples of real world attacks like this. ↩ Reply
Overall the movie is very interesting from philosophical point of view, but I see how it may alienate people who just want to see something easy on the mind. And therefor I think I should recommend it, but with a warning. This might not be a movie you will like. But if you like, say, Only God Forgives, you will enjoy Megalopolis. ↩ Reply
Happy Hacking!!! ↩ Reply
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