Tetro
2009
Citizen Koppola.
In the space of just eight years, Francis Ford Coppola wrote and/or directed
four of the greatest films of all time (the first two Godfather films,
Apocalypse Now and Patton). He also wrote an original screenplay for and
directed a low-budget film which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes (The
Conversation). The Conversation was also nominated for the Best Picture Oscar,
but lost to a film directed by some guy named Francis Ford Coppola.
FFC was in his thirties when that streak ended. Since then (going on 31 years at
press time) he's had to be content with some highly visible failures like One
from the Heart and a few minor successes like The Outsiders, Rumble Fish,
Godfather III, Dracula, Peggy Sue Got Married, and Tucker: the Man and His
Dream. Those three decades seemed like a time when he was treading water while
trying to assemble his still-unmade futuristic masterpiece Megalopolis. From
time to time rumors floated East from California that something was moving
forward on Megalopolis. One great star or another was attached to it. A
massively long script was making the rounds. The film would run five hours. The
film would cost $300 million; $500 million; whatever.
Coppola finally had to accept the fact that Megalopolis was a pipedream because
he simply could not convince investors that the risk/reward ratio was
acceptable. But by the time he did that, he had become a rich man from a variety
of sources inside and outside the world of cinema. He then came to the
realization that his wealth equaled absolute movie-making freedom through the
self-financing route. Oh, he could not finance Megalopolis or even some
Godfather sequels out of his own pocket, but he could make a nearly limitless
string of modest films like The Conversation. Indeed, if he's willing to
consider the cost of his films as a write-off rather than an investment, he can
do whatever the hell he pleases, critics be damned, investors be damned, box
office be damned. Like the fictional Charles Foster Kane - "I think it would be
fun to run a newspaper" - he can create anything he would actually enjoy
creating.
So Coppola has turned to projects he really loves with the enthusiasm and
passion of a young man, and he's making the kinds of films young men make when
they have not yet learned the value of subtlety and the difference between drama
and melodrama. That kind of fearless willingness to wear one's heart on one's
sleeve, coupled with a disdain for compromises designed to perk up the box
office, can produce some brilliant, personal films (Magnolia, e.g.) - the sorts
of films that inspire as much passion as they exude. Such projects almost always
lose money, of course, but what difference does that make to the very rich?
Two or three years ago, FFC made Youth Without Youth from an obscure novel by a
Romanian theologian. Like a university student in an elderly body, Coppola dared
to work outside the bounds of natural law to take on the big philosophical
questions of existence, to deal with lost youth and might-have-beens. It's not
an exceptionally good film, and yet, as
I wrote at the time: "There
is great filmmaking on display here. The problem is that Coppola just had no
idea how to manage the rambling, internalized discourse on the many subjects
Eliade had mastered in many languages, ranging from linguistics to metaphysics
to the history of religion to the place of man in the universe. One cannot make
a film about everything, or even all the things in that last sentence, so
Coppola would have had to winnow all that down to a comprehensible and focused
movie which allowed us to understand and empathize with the characters. It plays
out just as you might expect - as a brilliant student film, except one made by a
student who just happens to know more about filmmaking than any of his
classmates or his professors." Or anyone else.
Tetro is more of the same. It's an epic-length black and white film, half in
English and half in Spanish. It's about unbearable family secrets in the Darth
Vader mold, but played out in Buenos Aires rather than in outer space. The
context includes mental illness facilities, experimental theater productions,
opera, classical dance, and symphonic music. It's filled with the release of
long-suppressed emotions, sweeping panoramas of Patagonia, aesthetic theory, the
pain of one's coming-of-age ... you name it. It has a balletic dream
sequence like the one in "Oklahoma!" in which dancers mirror and re-enact the
characters' memories and fears. Like Coppola's previous film, it is distinctly
uncommercial: Youth Without Youth grossed a quarter of a million dollars on 18
screens; Tetro made it to 16 screens and raised the gross to $400,000 - on a
budget of some $15 million.
Citizen Kane, like Citizen Koppola, lost money on his vanity projects. His
response: so what? Coppola could echo Kane's exact words, adjusted only to put
the cost in 2010 dollars: "You're right, I did lose a million dollars last year.
I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars
next year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll
have to close this place - in 60 years." Coppola doesn't need to stretch
his fortune out for 60 years. He is 70 now. I assume he can keep making these
intense, idiosyncratic, and sometimes overwrought films until he dies.
I hope he does.
In addition to his other achievements, Coppola got some hot chicks naked,
including:
You go, grandpa!
