Finally, after decades of development, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis meets its audience. But who or what makes up his audience? The film doesn’t appear to be doing well at the box office, and one could argue that thanks to its festival screenings and fancy previews, a large portion of its target audience – namely film geeks – have already seen it. Since its Cannes premiere, critics have been mixed about the $120 million epic. Perhaps mixed is not a strong enough term. Let’s say wildly divided. Sometimes they are completely different within the same review. Not long ago I spoke to a filmmaker who said he was watching Megalopolis alternately staring at the screen in awe and holding your head in your hands out of second-guess embarrassment.

This is pretty close to what I thought when I saw it Megalopolis in Cannes in May. The film has authentic passages of great beauty, but often fails due to the basic narrative style. There are some wonderful set pieces, but just as many scenes feel overlit and flat, uninspired and clumsy. Its conceptual quirks – the dialogue in verse, the neo-Romanesque hair and costume design – can be endearing, but the performances are muddled and not every actor seems to have gotten that. Of course, critics disagree about this memo Was. Is Aubrey Plaza’s self-consciously vampiric, campy performance a clever part of the film’s crazy design? Or is it simply misguided exaggeration? Does Jon Voight know he’s there?

That might explain the strangely confrontational manner Megalopolis was rolled out. A few weeks ago, Lionsgate was criticized (some by me) for releasing a trailer that misquoted some of the most important film critics in history. Whichever Knucklehead decided to use artificial intelligence to make up negative quotes from people like Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris about films like The Godfather Sure, they sparked controversy, but they also diverted everyone’s attention from the most interesting aspect of the trailer: In the lead-up to the film’s release, Coppola & Co. had targeted critics for not appreciating the maestro’s work. Their thesis seemed to be this: “The Godfather, Apocalypse nowAnd Bram Stoker’s Dracula were all huge hits, and if the critics hated those films, how can you trust them with the new film?”

It doesn’t matter that this wasn’t an accurate interpretation of history – or the present. Because despite all the mixed reactions, critics were kinder to them Megalopolis than the average audience is likely to be. I count myself among these critics. I was never bored Megalopolis. For all its many flaws, it is too crazy and alive to ignore, dismiss or forget. In fact, I rewatched Coppola’s film at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month and was pretty sure I was going to watch it again before it came out in theaters. (Admittedly, I may have to act quickly.) Megalopolis will never be a normal film, but it plays infinitely better with repeated viewings. And while it could easily be dismissed as the bizarre ramblings of a quixotic, over-the-top artist lost in his own ideas and surrounded by yes-men, the intensely personal nature of the film and the way it’s mixed is not too Overlook Raw sincerity with blatant silliness forces you to look deeper. And in this case, it helps to be familiar with the life and career of its creator.

“I grew up in a family that moved every six months,” Coppola told me in an interview years ago. “I attended 22 schools before coming to college. I was always the lonely new kid. And you can never completely get rid of this impression when you are very young. Why did I make a film like this? The conversationa film about a lonely older man who lives alone and eavesdrops on people? There must be an aspect of that in me.” But a filmmaker must have some naturally extroverted qualities: otherwise it’s hard to get dozens, sometimes hundreds of people, to do what you want. As a director and mini-mogul, Coppola always tried to create collectives, cooperatives and partnerships. He surrounded himself with other filmmakers and, in some cases, helped finance their passion projects. He longed for a studio like the early days of United Artists, a company founded and run by artists.

Yet there was also something reserved and lonely about him. Watch his wife Eleanor’s great documentary. Hearts of Darknessabout the making of Apocalypse nowand you’ll see at the center of this legendarily chaotic, multi-million dollar epic someone who, at this moment, is the loneliest man in the world. In later years, Coppola was known for preparing his productions by inviting cast members to his home for home-cooked meals and collaborative rehearsal sessions. But on set, he was reportedly often confined to his famous Silverfish, the state-of-the-art Airstream trailer from which he could direct the proceedings like a lone god. That has always been the paradox of his career. He longs for connection, but also lives in his own head.

This paradox is also at the center Megalopolis. It’s a film full of big ideas, and while it doesn’t always pay off, it does encourage you to engage with them. “Is this society the only one available to us?” asks Adam Driver’s Cesar Catilina during a press conference about halfway through the film. “And when we ask these questions, when there is a dialogue about it, then it is basically a utopia.” These lines can also be found everywhere in the trailers; They are clearly important to Coppola. It is also significant that the “live cinema” element of the film takes place in this scene: in some screenings, a real person stands at the microphone to “ask” Cesar a question. (Unfortunately, the audio is pre-recorded.) Coppola reportedly hoped early on that this could be a moment of full audience participation. He asked Amazon to develop voice recognition software that would allow viewers to question Cesar. The director’s idea that utopia is not a fixed state but a conversation about the future reflects his approach to filmmaking itself. “I’ve always felt that when you make a film you’re essentially asking a question,” he said in our interview above. “And when you’re done, the movie you have is the answer.”

But Megalopolis itself does not contain much debate about the future of the city or the world in which it takes place. There is general language about “now” and “eternity,” but little concrete detail. Cesar, a visionary but egocentric architect, spends much of the film monologues, and the substance he has developed, Megalon, has vague, undefined properties; It’s more magic than science.

And yet the discussion about the future that the film lacks could well be made possible by its mere existence. Coppola has created a film that we can argue about, make big claims about, and blame each other for. In another era, a film like this might have caused riots at screenings; Nowadays people tend to play in front of empty halls. But that doesn’t stop us from talking about it – whether it’s about the form, or the wild risks of spending your money on a crazy dream project, or the feasibility of live cinema, or whether the director has lost his mind has, or whether critics can be trusted. In that sense, Coppola may have actually achieved his dream. For one shining moment, in the world outside his head, he created the conversations he apparently had in it. The audience participation element of Megalopolis Isn’t that some poor Zhlub standing in the dark with a dead microphone? It’s us.