Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola received a ten-minute standing ovation for his self-financed opus Megalopolis at the Cannes Film Festival, despite it being widely panned by critics.
The 85-year-old had been pondering the film for decades and finally realised his138 minute vision, which stars a host of A-listers including Adam Driver, Shia LaBeouf, Aubrey Plaza and Dustin Hoffman.
Coppola, wearing a straw hat and holding a cane, walked the Cannes carpet on Thursday, often clinging to the arm of his granddaughter, Romy Coppola Mars, while the soundtrack to The Godfather played over festival loudspeakers.
After the screening, the Cannes audience stood in a lengthy ovation for Coppola and the film. The director eventually took the microphone to emphasize his movie's ultimate meaning.
“We are one human family and that's who we should pledge our allegiance to," Coppola told the crowd.
However the movie has been met with a far less positive reception from many critics.
“If you love Francis Ford Coppola give this tawdry mess a miss,” ran the headline for the Evening Standard’s one-star review on Friday.
Other reviews ranged from "a folly of gargantuan proportions" to "the craziest thing I've ever seen”.
Peter Bradshaw, for The Guardian, called it "megabloated and megaboring." Tim Grierson, for Screen Daily, called it a "disaster" "stymied by arbitrary plotting and numbing excess.
Writing for The Times, Kevin Maher called it a "head-wrecking abomination" and gave it one star. The Telegraph was much more positive, however, giving it four stars.
Coppola poured $120 million of his own money into the film after selling off a portion of his wine estate. He still needs to agree a deal with a US distributor.
Not unlike Coppola's Apocalypse Now some 45 years ago, Megalopolis arrived trailed by rumors of production turmoil and doubt over its potential appeal to the wider moviegoing public.
What Coppola unveiled defies easy categorisation. It's a fable set in a futuristic New York about an architect (Adam Driver) who has a grand vision of a more harmonious metropolis, and whose considerable talents include the ability to start and stop time.
Though Megalopolis is set in a near-future, it's fashioned as a Roman epic. Driver's character is named Cesar and the film's New York includes a modern Coliseum.
The cast includes Aubrey Plaza as an ambitious TV journalist named Wow Platinum, Giancarlo Esposito as the mayor, Laurence Fishburne as Cesar's driver (and the film's narrator) and Shia LaBeouf as an unpleasant cousin named Claudio.
Megalopolis is dedicated to Eleanor Coppola, the director's wife who died last month.
