‘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

Utopia FRANCIS Ford Coppola and his wife, Eleanor Coppola, on set during the production of "Megalopolis."

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 in a bit of a 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 is never fully disentangled. Figgis gets moments of real tension and genuine behind-the-scenes drama, but is 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. (Figgis occasionally inserts eyepopping figures onscreen: art department $27 million, wardrobe $7 million, locations $16 million, etc.) Conjoining a story drawn from ancient Rome with a setting in near-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-muchness, as if Coppola were trying so hard to make a totalizing statement on humanity, society and a possible future that he got lost in his own creation.