A legendary filmmaker, no US distributor and reports of a chaotic production: Megalopolis debuted on the Croisette with arguably the exact ingredients needed to dial anticipation up to its highest for a Cannes premiere. Early on Thursday morning, select critics were carted off to the Cineum—a multiplex outside the main town I heard someone liken to “a strip mall in Connecticut”—and the embargo lifted later that evening to a frenzied scatter of opinions. To some: a masterpiece of realized ambition, a sweeping philosophical epic. To others: “Megaflopolis”.

In a stroke of visual poetry, the Letterboxd ratings curve now looks like the skyscrapers of Coppola’s ‘New Rome,’ with the most popular results either one or five stars at the time of writing. In the former camp is Shubra: “I know this was 40 years in the making but it could have used a few more”. In the latter is Jeckiboy, who found it a “flux of abject beauty.” Luke279 was bewildered, FilmLandEmpire exhilarated. Geofilms both loves it and despises it. The spectrum speaks volumes: Megalopolis is cinema; Megalopolis is stale; Megalopolis is unwatchable.

For those in need of some table-setting, the plot of Megalopolis is hard to summarize but here goes: Adam Driver’s Cesar is an architect with bold visions of turning New Rome (a version of New York City) into a utopian paradise using a magical material he has discovered named Megalon, which would organically grow with and sustain its inhabitants. (The most concrete result I could glean from Megalon is that it would provide easy access to parks: a fifteen-minute city for all.) This puts Cesar in conflict with the hot-headed Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), further complicated by his romantic entanglement with Cicero’s socialite daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel). Wow Platinum, Aubrey Plaza’s high-camp tabloid journalist, bops around with her own agenda. Secondary characters may as well be in other movies.

Others aren’t so sure. For Yendyss, it’s a “cringy misogynistic old man ego trip,” while Matt hasn’t laughed harder in a film than when “Grace Vanderwaal and four of her clones descended on a crescent moon to sing a song about the importance of virginity.” (That really happens.) Reading reviews of those who hated it, two things stuck out to me: it feels like a Tommy Wiseau film, but at least Aubrey Plaza is having the time of her life.

As the divisive reviews continued to emerge, Coppola arrived at the press conference on Friday morning ed by his family—including actress Talia Shire and filmmaker Roman Coppola—as well as cast Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza, Nathalie Emmanuel, Giancarlo Esposito, Laurence Fishburne and Jon Voight. Coppola recounted bringing a five-year-old Sofia on his shoulders to his first Cannes, and addressed the financial risk he took on Megalopolis with a simple: “I never cared about that.” He continued, “the money doesn’t matter. What’s important are friends, because a friend will never let you down. Money may evaporate.”

Just as the conference was wrapping up, Coppola requested for the final words to be from Shire. She closed with poignant remarks on Coppola’s vision, stating that in an industry so often focused on looking backward, her brother keeps his eyes firmly on the horizon. “To go forward is unknown. Every day with my brother, he made you go forward,” she said. “He is creative courage, he is a visionary. You were a visionary when you were nine-years-old.”

Referencing her own acting career, she stated: “Sometimes you don’t know why [you do it]. It’s so hard to get a job, and then you come on a set with Francis, and you work with these great actors, and you’re changed. It is the future—you do go forward. When you work with Francis, you go forward.”

Forward we go, into a future where Megalopolis will be continually revisited, debated, dissected. Whether regarding it as excellent or egregious, we’re lucky to be living in that world.