With the money he earned from his winemaking activities, Francis Ford Coppola financed Megalopolishis big return to directing, after thirteen years of absence. Filmed on the sidelines of the ” fast food “ what Hollywood has become in his eyes, the film is savoured like an atypical vintage, with long and heady notes. In an interview, the 85-year-old filmmaker proves to be like his drinks: strong in the mouth, with an intoxicating erudition, he ages well.
Images are projected onto the buildings of “Megalopolis”, whose walls seem like screens. What is the relationship between cinema and architecture?
At the beginning of Eight and a half [1963]by Fellini, the protagonist is suffocating in a car, trapped in a tunnel: the setting is first and foremost a metaphor. This is also the case in Megalopolis. If Catilina, the character played by Adam Driver, kisses a woman at the top of a skyscraper, it is because it is an extremely dangerous act, which will turn his life upside down. For the Indians, opposites come together: creation is equivalent to destruction. However, our brain interprets everything according to our survival: falling, for it, is not synonymous with elevation but with mortal risk. Who knows if it is wrong? It is up to artists and mythologists to enlighten us on the true meaning of things.
Is “Megalopolis” a peplum?
It’s a peplum in which America would be Rome. The United States was strongly inspired by ancient Rome: its institutions, its laws, its architecture. In 509 BC, the Romans chased away their monarch and invented the Republic; similarly, our founding fathers refused to let us be a colony of the King of England. Pennsylvania Station, a magnificent New York train station demolished in 1963, was modeled on the Baths of Caracalla… I always wanted to make a peplum, because this genre has the best ingredients: battles, strong women, slaves, mad emperors… Peplums resonate with the ideology of their time: Spartacus [1960]by Kubrick, evokes the movement for African-American civil rights. When I discovered the story of the Catiline conspiracy against Cicero, I thought of the conflict between New York elected officials and urban planner Robert Moses [1888-1981]…
Legend has it that, to prepare for the film, you visited Arcosanti, a utopian city in the Arizona desert. Is this true?
I stayed there for two weeks, I was the cook. The way the city adapts to the climate interested me: the houses are ventilated at night, without wasting energy. I went everywhere where there was a demonstrable utopia: Arcosanti, Curitiba, Brazil… I learned that the more a city resembles nature, the better. Rather than in concrete, we could live in flowers, pine cones, forests – especially since we now know the genome of plants. I dream of a living architecture, which loves you and helps you, like a friend: if it rains, your home protects you; if the weather is nice, it lets the sun through.
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