It’s been hard to escape reviews of Francis Ford Coppola’s $120 million home movie in the last month. Either ‘the worst film’ you have ever seen or a ‘late masterpiece’. It is neither. It is less awful than Wicked, Venom or the other noisy, stupid and forgettable studio blockbusters that were offered in the trailers before the film. But it was quickly apparent that Megalopolis was a runaway train that Coppola had lost control over whilst stoned or drunk or in grief for his dying wife Eleanor whose inspiration for the director is dramatised within the story.
But which story? There were about five films rolled into one rollercoaster ride here. There are visual flashes of genius, lots of (unintentionally?) hilarious stuff – the audience laughed a lot – and the analogies between decadent Rome and late imperial US work well on the big screen. Adam Driver does noble work trying to anchor all the many strands of the chaotic storytelling together as architect Cesar Catallina who can hit the pause button on time. In fact, it is a great cast, with Jon Voight at his cackling best as Hamilton Crassus and Shia LaBoeuf camping it up in a pink dress. And yet nothing could really save this from being a long-winded fairground ride and so ultimately not so different from dross like Wicked, Venom and most 100 million dollar Hollywood films of the last decade or more.
There was a bit more to chew over than in a standard blockbuster and it was stupid-funny like Coppola’s 1990s Dracula, but the tightly controlled storyteller of the 1970s who made Godfather 1 and 2, Apocalypse Now and The Conversation is long gone.
Many commented how weird and trippy Megalopolis was and it is probably better watching it high, but if you want really weird try Omen (2023) directed by Beloji out on MUBI now. This extraordinary film is about a Congolese man, Koffi, returning to his birthplace Kinshasa with his pregnant, white partner Alice (a very cool, unflappable Belgian) for his family’s blessing, a family reunion which goes horribly wrong in quite spectacular ways.
It is the most intense and unnerving film I have seen this year. Visually, it makes Megalopolis look like Downton Abbey. The film is the stuff of an acid nightmare, delving into a society broken by poverty, trauma and superstition. Without mentioning any of its history the film shows what centuries of the slave trade, King Leopold’s Holocaust, war and post-colonial exploitation have done to the nation. Koffi’s father, who we never meet, works in a local mine whose scag heap dominates the horizon like an ancient pyramid. The mother is a study in bitter silence and mental illness.
The landscape is a blighted city with terrifying parades seething with gang rivalry, between jungle and desert where myths are played out in a kind of dream chorus. The cast is outstanding and, despite the lurid chaos explored, the film felt more humane and empathic than other films such as City of God that simply revel in violence and dysfunction.
Omen is Meet the Parents as a horror film as you tumble through the stories of a resilient but deeply suspicious family coping with everyday violence in a world that is more alien than you can possibly imagine. While Omen may not do wonders for Congolese tourism it made me think how infrequently we get to see films set in central Africa. Beloji is a strikingly original new voice who brings a kind of magic realism to a sinister family reunion (shades of Get Out). The depiction of a son returning to an African family that mostly rejects him has a redemptive ending which prevents it from being too oppressive and offers insight into why the mother is so cold and hurtful to her son.
So, if you like strange, challenging films you might enjoy either Megalopolis or Omen, but I think Omen will leave its stamp on you much longer.
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