Francis Ford Coppola’s passion project Megalopolis has premiered at Cannes film festival with reviews divided between “staggeringly ambitious”, “absolute madness”, and “bafflingly shallow”. The film’s premise is about “political ambition, genius and conflicted love” where “the fate of Rome haunts a modern world unable to solve its own social problems”. It stars Adam Driver as a Nobel prize-winning architect and scientist named Cesar Catilina, who has gained powers to control time and space after a scientific discovery.”
Bilge Ebiri wrote in Vulture that it “sometimes feels like the fevered thoughts of a precocious child, driven and dazzled and maybe a little lost in all the possibilities of the world before him”. “There is nothing in Megalopolis that feels like something out of a ‘normal’ movie. The characters speak in archaic phrases and words, mixing shards of Shakespeare, Ovid, and at one point straight-up Latin.”
The NY Times reported a “mishmash of acting styles” with dialogue “either bluntly declarative or totally impenetrable”.
Jason Gorber wrote “Megalopolis can feel almost as if HBO’s Rome was rewritten by a thousand monkeys, some of them even getting their spelling correct.”
Other reviews were more positive – Deadline: “something of a mess: unruly, exaggerated and drawn to pretension like a mother to a flame” – but also lauded its “sheer audacity” as “the work of a master artist who has taken to Imax like Caravaggio to canvas”.
Coppola’s Apocalypse Now was also slated when it launched in 1979 but became regarded as a cinema great.
Coppola was born 7 April 1939 1.38 am Detroit, Michigan into a creatively talented family of Italian immigrants, had polio in his childhood which confined him to bed where he made his own puppet theatre productions. His reputation as the greatest ever movie maker was cemented in the 1970s with the Godfather and then Apocalypse Now and he has won every award going for his other movies as well.
He has a quick witted and communicative 3rd house Sun, Saturn and Mercury in Aries with his emphasized Jupiter in Pisces also in his 3rd in a creative Water Grand Trine to Pluto in the 7th and a Scorpio Moon, formed into a Kite by Jupiter opposition Neptune. Saturn in Aries will make him self-reliant and a Water Grand Trine give him a fertile imagination. His Sun Mercury are also square a go-getting, assertive Mars in Capricorn on his Ascendant.
Despite his golden reputation his career has always been roller coaster. His 1970s saw great success with the Godfather and Apocalypse Now but his debts were piling up and in the 1980s he went bankrupt three times as tr Pluto moved across his Midheaven crossing his North Node in Scorpio with his Solar Arc Neptune moving in tandem. His Water Grand Trine makes him creative but not always realistic – and his driving Jupiter opposition Neptune will lean him towards the overly optimistic.
His 10th harmonic, the wheel of fortune ups and downs, is heavily aspected with a hint of over confidence being his Achilles Heel. His creative 5th and 7th harmonics are strong, as is his break-through, genius 13H and global influencer 22H.
The recent Solar Eclipse was conjunct his Saturn Sun perhaps for a sobering moment with the October Solar Eclipse opposing his Mercury for a back-to-the-drawing-board and collect-his wits few months. His Grand Trine and Kite are being jolted with tr Uranus opposing his Moon on one leg this July onwards into 2025; tr Pluto square opposition his Pluto; and tr Saturn conjunct his Jupiter opposition Neptune in 2025. Plus his SA Sun in a jarring opposition to his Mars exact in six months.
He will get some cheer from tr Uranus conjunct his Jupiter/Pluto midpoint this June and onwards into early 2025. Not exactly ecstatic but he will have some morale boosts alongside a few setbacks.