KARACHI:
High off the success of Alien 1979, Ridley Scott offered the world one of the greatest science fiction films, Blade Runner, in 1982. Since then, the film has come to be considered a classic.
In 2017, Denis Villeneuve released Blade Runner 2049, a worthy sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1982 original. It built upon the dystopian cyberpunk universe and explored its themes with as sensibility as Scott had. It also continued showcasing Villeneuve as one of the few singular auteur voices in cinema today. Yet, like the original, the $150 million magnum opus failed to break even on the box office. And now there is a Blade Runner series in works.
Films fail at the box office. They may even be critically panned at the time of release. But great films always live on. Think Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, David Lynch’s Eraserhead, David Fincher’s Fight Club and a million more titles. We have witnessed it countless times and especially with the current state of cinema, we will continue to.
Francis Ford Coppola, another veteran filmmaker, released his dream project Megalopolis last year. The $120 million sci-fi epic revolved around an architect’s dream of creating a utopia as a regressive, conservative mayor stands in his way. The film bombed critically and financially.
Razzing the Razzies
On February 28, the Golden Raspberry Awards, also known as Razzies – the opposite of Oscars – announced its winners and Francis Ford Coppola won the Worst Director for his dream project Megalopolis. The veteran filmmaker was apparently ecstatic at receiving the award.
“I am thrilled to accept the Razzie award in so many important categories for Megalopolis, and for the distinctive honour of being nominated as the worst director, worst screenplay, and worst picture at a time when so few have the courage to go against the prevailing trends of contemporary moviemaking!” he wrote on Instagram.
While the existence and idiocy of Razzies and the damage it causes is a story for another day – one can argue the same about all art competitions and awards – what Coppola points out is spot on. And him being ironically thrilled of winning a Razzie is not only hilarious but also a statement in itself.
There is almost a deliberate and methodical contempt and vitriol against anything that goes against the grain now. Instead of accepting experimentation, we stand against it. Instead of fighting it, we defend the status quo of mediocre, cookie-cutter, vanilla junk that we can consume as a second screen experience while we finish dinner. Art and cinema, hence, serves as background noise that stops us from being alone with our thoughts and feelings instead of serving as a catalyst to confront those same thoughts and feelings.
Forty years ago, a film that didn’t immediately turn a 500 per cent profit within its opening weekend would not be the end of a career. A film would find its life on its own for years to come. A new audience rediscovers and resuscitates it and over generations, it becomes part of history. The current system of filmmaking worldwide vehemently tries to halt this from happening.
This is the ‘Marvel effect’ – a dumbing down of the audience over decades so that anything that sways from the formula, anything that defies the rules of conventional storytelling must be killed. Our horrendous treatment of art and cinema as a mere capitalist product – ‘content’ if you will – mirrors the world we live in.
Successful failures
“In this wreck of a world today, where ART is given scores as if it were professional wrestling, I chose to NOT follow the gutless rules laid down by an industry so terrified of risk that despite the enormous pool of young talent at its disposal, may not create pictures that will be relevant and alive 50 years from now.”
Coppola continued, “What an honour to stand alongside a great and courageous filmmaker like Jacques Tati who impoverished himself completely to make one of cinema’s most beloved failures, Playtime! My sincere thanks to all my brilliant colleagues who joined me to make our work of art, Megalopolis, and let us remind ourselves that box-office is only about money, and like war, stupidity and politics has no true place in our future.”
Coppola’s comparison to Tati’s Playtime is apt as the latter went bankrupt building a model city for his experimental classic. And Coppola invested his fortune from the wine-making business to fund Megalopolis. Currently, he is working on a smaller film as he says he’s spent all his money on the sci-fi epic.
Now it’s too early to make a case whether Megalopolis will be remembered as the misunderstood masterpiece years from now and celebrated as such. In my view, the film throws every rule out the window and focuses on provocative political imagery. It’s inspired by the fall of the Roman Republic and draws its parallels to the modern-day USA, a fitting comparison, all things considered. Say what you may about the film, it doesn’t bore you for a single second. The maximalist approach, gold-soaked visuals and the sheer ambitious scope of the film make for an interesting watch, even if not a fully satisfying one.
Whether it’s the experimental nature of the film or the Marvel-effect coupled with the post-pandemic streaming zeitgeist that we live in that caused Megalopolis’ failure is anyone’s guess. However, I will reiterate the importance of the existence of such films. The world is in dire need of such bold risks to shake us out of being complacent consumers of commonplace, crude ‘content’. If filmmakers stop taking risks, we will keep watching Dwayne Johnson in a sweaty, grey t-shirt play Dwayne Johnson in every single film for all eternity. If filmmakers are only allowed to produce films for streaming platforms only considering numbers, every film will have a superhero trying meta-humour and every film will focus on cramming ‘diversity’ to sell to all markets, regardless of the need of the story. That’s our present. But is that the future we want or need?
