"Megadoc"

 ☆☆☆ 

Moviemaking is a curious art form. Individuals are recognized as the creator of films, and yet dozens, scores, hundreds, even thousands of people are involved in bringing a film to screen. Unlike writing, music, painting, dance, acting, it's almost (not quite, but almost) inconceivable that an individual could ever create a film, especially one that can be shown theatrically.

That curious paradox of film — that A Film By Famous Director — really isn't at all "by" that person becomes all the more curious when you consider a movie like Megalopolis. It sprang from the mind of Francis Ford Coppola, who wrote the screenplay and directed the movie. But ... did it? Because the number of people it took to bring the film to screen is staggering. It's overwhelming. It's unmanageable.

Which is exactly what Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis became: unmanageable. To viewers, to actors, to the craftspeople who built it, to Coppola himself, it becomes clear during Mike Figgis's simultaneously remarkable and bewildering documentary Megadoc, which is available on the Criterion Channel.

In an extraordinary act of hubris matched only by that time Brian de Palma invited journalist Julie Salamon to be a "fly on the wall" of the set of his notorious disaster The Bonfire of the Vanities, Coppola asked Figgis — the noted director of Stormy Monday and Leaving Las Vegas — to document the production of his personal epic.

The movie, Coppola promises time and again, will heal the world. The first time he says it, the words seem odd, almost comical. The first time someone else says it, you realize what went wrong with Megalopolis, which the documentary doesn't flinch from revealing: Nobody could tell Coppola "no." This emperor must always, under all circumstances, have clothes, especially when he didn't.

Coppola spent $120 million of his own money to make Megalopolis. He sold off shares of his successful winery to fund the movie. In his mind — and it's one of the most cogent, coherent things he says in the documentary — there's no point to dying with a lot of money in the bank. He'd rather go bankrupt funding his dream.

Whether Coppola is bankrupt, I don't know. Whether his dream was worth staking his entire fortune on is something filmmakers can judge for themselves by watching Megalopolis, which I did last year. Whether he was able to communicate his dream to those hundreds and hundreds of people who helped him spend all the money is much more clear: No, he wasn't.

Nor is he able to fully communicate the idea of Megalopolis to Figgis, which is what makes this both a compelling and extraordinarily frustrating documentary. It's compelling because watching movies being made is never less than compelling. It's a staggering feat, and in the middle of the chaos — a word Coppola eschews — is the director, the one person everyone turns to over and over for answers. Coppola has none.

Without answers, Megadoc means watching something being made but not knowing what any of it means. The action itself is interesting, but the intention is unclear. Throughout Megadoc, Figgis incorporates on-screen titles that detail the staggering, unbelievable amounts of money being spent: $10 million for costumes, $1 million for catering. As a director, Figgis seems incredulous that Coppola is so profligate.

But he almost never stops to ask the fundamental question: Why? Nor does he show us the result. Megadoc ends when the film screens at Cannes, but ignores its rocky theatrical release or the overwhelmingly puzzled response the movie got from critics. Figgis allows people to make claims about the ways Megalopolis will "heal the world" but never challenges them. When Dustin Hoffman says he has no idea what he's doing in the movie, a more incisive documentary would have explored that.

It's Coppola's film. He's the director. As Jean Hagen said in Singin' in the Rain: "It says so right there." It took so many people to make it, though, and it's clear throughout Megadoc that most of them never really understood what they were doing or why.

Ultimately, Megadoc leaves the viewer almost as wanting for answers as Megalopolis itself — but it's vastly more entertaining. It's a must-see for anyone fascinated by the communal art form of filmmaking. For others, especially those intrigued by the artistic process of directors, writers, designers and performers, it's a bit too opaque. Though perhaps that's fitting for a documentary about a movie that seems to revel in its opacity.

Viewed January 19, 2026 — Criterion Channel