After a year in the film industry dominated by conversations about artificial intelligence, it feels fitting that The 77th Cannes Film Festival opened with Quentin Dupiex’s The Second Act – a dark comedy and meta-commentary about the first movie to be written and directed by AI. It’s hard to escape the looming presence of AI at the festival this year, from packed panels with tech industry speakers to free drinks at tents promoting the latest advancements in trendy intellectual property theft. As I sit down to write for the first time this week – equipped with a complimentary espresso and glass of wine at the beachfront Microsoft lounge – there are hoards of people swarming the Microsoft Copilot AI speaker with questions like “can it write dialogue for me” and “does it write music?”
There is no doubt that Dupieux despises the creative leeches swarming these AI events and infiltrating the filmmaking industry with hopes of cutting corners on the path to success – filmmaking with the desire only for recognition rather than creative fulfillment. Not coincidentally this particular event is filled with the worst-dressed people on the Croisette at the moment. But The Second Act opening the festival on Tuesday night demonstrates the anxiety of the actual creatives in film at the moment and foreshadows a festival packed to the brim with worries about the future of cinema.
Unfortunately The Second Act, where the satire of technology sapping the human emotion from filmmaking is mostly sharp, diverges into a mouthpiece for Dupieux’s grievances with political correctness and waning audiences while providing little more than petty provocations. International film festivals have recently displayed the work of many young filmmakers willing to push formal boundaries and make distinctive art that provides hope for the future of the medium, with Cannes itself playing host to a number of extraordinary films that execute better on Dupieux’s ideas. Dupieux’s complaints feel comparatively worthless when his filmmaking and themes are as conventional as they are.
The shining moment of the film comes when Vincent Lindon, playing an older actor, tries to give some advice to the AI director of the film before being shut down by a computerized voice. Poignant moments of the artistic desperation that come with anxieties around AI are few and far between in the film though, and it feels as if the filmmakers use the Russian nesting doll structure of the movie within a movie within a movie to say the taboo things they wish they could say themselves.
This isn’t to say that the concerns Dupieux has about the future of filmmaking are not valid. But his vision of a future where algorithmic filmmaking drives away dissenting art falls flat when his satire is so trite. The lack of originality holds The Second Act back from being much more than a list of complaints about the film industry despite it being a prescient film to start off the festival.
Then came the most talked about film of the festival and one perhaps packed even more full of anxieties about the future: Megalopolis. Francis Ford Coppola’s divisive return to the Croisette is nothing if not original, and it is chock full of the same anxieties about the art form’s future. Unlike Dupieux, Coppola takes it upon himself to do something about these anxieties other than scream them into the void – using his self-funded $120 million budget as an outlet for creative experimentation.
Coppola’s worries are more centered around venturing into the unknown – for America, cinema, and his own life – and every moment of the film is packed full of a sprawling mess of ideas. The film’s ideas about the decline of the American empire are half-baked, to the point where it is hard to imagine it being made by the same artist who created The Godfather, but Megalopolis is fascinating as a self-portrait of Coppola. Rather than get caught up in complaining about how hard it is to make things in a PC world Coppola made a film that, despite its polarizing reaction, is packed with jaw-dropping images and bold formal choices that attempt to reimagine the possibilities of film language.
Ask anyone in Cannes to describe what Megalopolis is about and you will likely be met with an uncomfortable pause and maybe some stutters. The sprawling narrative is filled with characters and plot lines that get various degrees of resolutions as they opulently parade around Coppola’s vision of New York City meets Ancient Rome. Coppola himself had a tough time describing the film in an interview with GQ, saying “it’s basically… I would ask you a question, first of all: Do you know much about utopia?” But for all of its convoluted plotting and messy socio-political commentary the film is enrapturing; playing out like the bad dream of an artist at the end of his life who is haunted by the echoes of the film, history, and literature banging around in his brain.
Coppola’s daughter Sofia was talking in an interview about Francis’ curiosity as a filmmaker as he has grown older, mentioning how he will often call her to talk about a new breakthrough he has discovered in the filmmaking process. Coppola’s love for cinema and passion for constantly finding new ways of filmic storytelling are fully on display in Megalopolis. The film channels its nervous energy about the future into a go for broke experimental blockbuster that takes the sort of chances that are increasingly rare in film these days – and nearly nonexistent on the scale that Coppola is working with.The endings of The Second Act and Megalopolis are about as divergent as imaginable. Dupieux’s cynicism is on full display as he pretty much shatters any picture of humanity and hope that he may have built up over the course of the film. Megalopolis ends with one of the most shockingly optimistic finales of the festival so far, especially when compared with the endings of Coppola’s other works criticizing the American elite like The Godfather and The Conversation. Comparing the work of a twice Palme D’Or winning master like Coppola to Dupieux might be unfair territory, but if Coppola refuses to be afraid of the future then maybe his younger peers should take notes. Granted most filmmakers don’t have a wine fortune and hotel business to fall back on, but Coppola’s vision of an uncertain future as something to be embraced rather than feared could not have come at a better time.