‘Megadoc’ takes look inside a filmmaker’s grand gamble

Mike Figgis’ film of Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Megalopolis’ has its own production flaws.

- MARK OLSEN

At one point in “Megadoc,” a documentary about the production of Francis Ford Coppola’s ambitious, self-financed “Megalopolis,” director Mike Figgis offers to his camera that all the best films about the making of a movie are stories about disasters.

Which puts Figgis ina bit ofa dilemma — does he want what's better for his own film or for Coppola to succeed with the project he has been dreaming of for decades? While Figgis’ documentary doesn’t dwell on the problem, “Megadoc” does arguably end up suffering because that ethical knot isnever fully disentangled. Figgis gets moments ofreal tension and genuine behind-the-scenes drama, butis also too respectful and admiring of Coppola, understandably so, to push his own inquiry to its limits.

Coppola sold off parts of his wine business to finance “Megalopolis” himself for a reported $120 million. (Fig-gis occasionally inserts eye-popping figures onscreen: art department $27 million, wardrobe $7 million, locations $16 million, etc.) Conjoining a story drawn from ancient Rome with a setting innear-future New York City (and shooting around Atlanta), Coppola crafts a fantastical allegory of wealth, power and politics.

Though there are moments of genuine beauty, tenderness and pure transcendence in the finished “Megalopolis,” it also has a debilitating air of too-much-ness, as if Coppola were trying so hard to make a totaliz-ing statement on humanity, society and a possible future that he got lost in his own creation.