I wanted to see this before I read any reviews and come to my own conclusions.
Again, a supposedly master director and writer does not do even the simplest thing of allowing the audience to find its way into the movie. All art, including paintings, have this secret method of drawing you in. When it’s left out, or when it’s accidentally omitted, the audience or viewer must work overtime in order to “get” what’s happening. It doesn’t matter that there can be people running around all over the place, a movie, a book, a piece of art and a classical piece of music, must begin with an introduction which serves as a beckoning call.
Coppola chose not to do this, so for a good twenty minutes or so, I was sort of agreeing with everyone and the box office that this was a piece of garbage. After I had found my way in, I found it far more enjoyable, even with the bad casting choices and a distinctly outdated, it seemed to me, of filmmaking. I couldn’t really pin it down — what it was about the film that seemed so much like a 70s movie. Might have been the cinematography. I don’t know.
But all movies — all art actually — is about the artist’s journey. It doesn’t matter if it’s a dumb vehicle like Legally Blond, a historic musical like Les Miserables, or an epic like this. Coppola’s conclusion is that art is supreme and it is more important than affordable housing, various human needs and wants, relationships and so on. At the opening of the movie, he (Adam Driver) is standing on the edge of the Chrysler building, very precariously dangling his foot over the edge. When he starts to fall, he shouts, “Stop,” and the world stops moving and he stops falling, he pulls his foot back onto the ledge and straightens himself up. Then he shouts “Go,” and the world moves again. That is the artist in control of his or her world.
Ultimately, it’s a big fuck you to the movie industry. The character is an architect, but all the people around him can be seen as various types of industry people. The naysayers, the money men, and so on. I think I felt the most depressed about the movie industry when I realized that in order to get your movie produced, you had to pass literally hundreds of people who all have the power to say no. Just one of those people will destroy your chances. There’s just a handful of people who can say yes, and that goes for Broadway as well, and they almost never know what they are doing.
But I don’t think I would have spent $140 million on this. It might have been a long dream but it needed some outside help.
And please don’t hire Aubrey Plaza. She can be good, but when she has to act sophisticated, it’s like watching her and Chris Pratt as Andy as Bert Machlan on Parks and Recreation.