Richard Simon

Enjoyable re-creation of the hits and the public persona of this ‘complete unknown’ - but ironically, when the movie ends moments before the star’s life/changing motorcycle accident, we realize the genius/subject is still essentially ‘unknown.’ It’s ‘Maria’ without callouses.

Did anyone else see 'Babylon' a few years ago? I wouldn't have except that I was in it - as an extra who 'played' bass in a sidelining band just before (spoiler alert) Brad Pitt's character takes his own life. (Wanted someone in the band to say, 'People are dying to hear us play,' but no such luck.) Like 'Babylon,' 'Megalopolis' is visually sumptuous and rather bloated with tendentiousness. Just as the former purports to depict the tumultuous transformation of Hollywood when silent films were supplanted by talkies, the Coppola opus luxuriates in the corruption and debauchery of the fall of Rome, knowing we'd recognize its similarities to the shameless decadence of our own era. The dialogue is speechy, Driver's character even delivering a complete rendition of Hamlet's 'To be or not to be' soliloquy. The movie's Big Ideas about society and morality are sometimes declaimed by its characters or depicted as written decrees. The small ideas show up in the form of an Elvis impersonator and - in the hands of a feisty Jon Voigt - an apparent 'erection' that turns out to be a plot-turning hunting weapon. Driver falls in love with the daughter of his political rival. She becomes his muse, and eventually she can wield the same power to 'stop time' that he alone once possessed. Coppola's tale resolves on the side of optimism and reconciliation - on both personal and societal levels - but it's interesting that the happy ending is made possible only by 'stopping time.' My takeaway is that Coppola feels that we should seek salvation in Art - where time is suspended by both its creator and its experiencer - because, in time, humans and civilizations will keep sowing the seeds of their own destruction. And those are just a Coppola random thoughts...