Risky business: Even now, some directors are willing to take chances in big-budget films

Nathalie Emmanuel and Adam Driver co-star in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis.”

Big, bigger, biggest.

In a medium long ruled by superlatives — More stars than there are in heaven! The ultimate trip! — recently, some filmmakers have been pushing the boundaries even further.

“The Brutalist,” an upcoming drama from Brady Corbet, runs over 3 ½ hours (it also comes with an old-fashioned, 15-minute intermission). “Horizon,” a recent Western from Kevin Costner, not only ran for 3 hours, but is the first part of a projected four-film saga. (The second installment, already completed, is even longer.)

And while Francis Ford Coppola’s current release “Megalopolis” clocks in at a relatively restrained 2 ¼ hours, it stubbornly refuses to accept any artistic restraints; set in a mythical Manhattan modelled after ancient Rome, it mixes sci-fi and fable, spotlights a wild assortment of moods, and features a protagonist who can bend the laws of physics.

It’s as if all the auteurs were challenging each other to take wilder and wilder risks.

I dare you. I double dare you.

That can be tough on fans who have come to expect conventional narratives, or movies that wrap up neatly within 2 hours. (Tougher still on those of us who, 90 minutes into a film, start thinking about a trip to the restroom.) But to any hardcore film lover, it’s also terribly exciting.

That’s because, while you can still find offbeat offerings at film festivals and the rare surviving arthouse, features at the multiplex have gotten incredibly, stultifying safe. The concepts have to be simple (or better yet, pre-used); the conflicts, clear-cut; the endings, upbeat. American movies have begun to resemble factory-made products — and in the case of superhero flicks and action film franchises, they basically are.

So what a thrill to find a film — and a filmmaker — willing to risk it all.

Giancarlo Esposito in “Megalopolis.”

Coppola took the most dangerous gamble, sinking his own money into “Megalopolis,” an epic estimated to cost well over $120 million to produce. Yet as surprising as the movie itself is, that it takes risks is almost purely predictable; after the back-to-back paycheck productions of “Jack” and “The Rainmaker,” more than 25 years ago, Coppola has consistently turned to films that mix fact and fantasy, drama and dreams.

Those pictures, however — “Youth Without Youth,” “Tetro,” “Twixt” — were smaller productions. “Megalopolis” is the magnum opus he has dreamed of for years.

Does it work? Absolutely — on its own, and Coppola’s, terms. But first you need to accept those terms. You have to go into it open to magic realism, and alternative worlds. You have to be comfortable with a wide range of acting styles, from darkly intense to deliciously camp. (It helps immeasurably, too, to share some of the director’s own interests and inspirations — “Metropolis,” Marcus Aurelius, “The Power Broker,” Shakespeare.)

The film’s staunchest defenders — and I’m one — won’t say it isn’t flawed, even sometimes foolish. But even its harshest critics — and there are more than a few — can’t seem to stop talking about it.

Kevin Costner in “Horizon: An American Saga.”

Ultimately less controversial — but perhaps even more problematic, commercially — is Costner’s sagebrush epic, officially titled “Horizon: An American Saga.” It’s another passion project (when I last interviewed the star, more than 15 years ago, he was already talking about his plans for it). The gamble isn’t the subject; Costner has had success with Westerns before, and is still surging off TV’s “Yellowstone.” The risk is the format: four separate films.

The first installment, “Chapter 1,” was released in June (it’s currently available on cable) and immediately presented two different problems. The first was simply artistic. As the leadoff to a complicated, multi-character saga, it needed to establish a wide variety of characters who will probably loom large later; as a result, it was never able to concentrate on anyone long enough for us to establish our own relationship with them, and the narrative got mired in exposition and foreshadowing.

Apart from a few stirring sequences — including a Native attack on a pioneer family’s cabin dramatizing all the brutality that “The Searchers” left offscreen — it felt like rote, get-it-done filmmaking.

The film’s second problem remains, frankly, commercial — an unpleasant subject for any artist but perhaps one Costner should have considered. Coppola’s risk was, in its own way, self-contained; once “Megalopolis” was finished and in theaters, his work was done, the art complete. But Costner’s multi-stage project depended on the first film being a success. Currently there is no firm release date for the already-finished second film. And while the third is in production, whether the fourth will ever be made seems like an open question.

Streaming services are infamous for taking what could have been a single film and stretching it over a season; “Horizon: An American Saga” may become famous as the rare film that would have been better as a 12-episode series.

Alessandro Nivola, left, and Adrien Brody in “The Brutalist.”

Director Bradley Corbet took a different kind of gamble. A former actor, his last film as a director, 2018’s “Vox Lux,” opened to somewhat mixed reviews and markedly empty theaters; undeterred, he started developing “The Brutalist” almost immediately. A sweeping drama about a Hungarian architect who survives the Nazi death camps, comes to America and struggles to rebuild his career, it is ambitious in every way, from its towering sets and formal compositions to its hard-headed and sometimes unsympathetic protagonist.

And like the similarly ambitious “Megalopolis,” it succeeds beautifully — if you’re willing to let it.

Actually, the films have quite a bit in common. Both feature egotistical architects as their heroes — a perfectly logical stand-in for their creators (like filmmakers, builders can only realize their titanic visions by employing vast armies of workers, while contending with budgets and time frames). Both even have very similar stars (although Adam Driver heads up “Megalopolis,” and Adrien Brody “The Brutalist,” they easily could have switched roles).

Both films demand a lot of their audiences emotionally, too. While neither features an unhappy ending, per se, their arrogant heroes first have to take long and sometimes painful journeys. One man endures years of grinding poverty and a debilitating drug habit; the other is surrounded by sly conspirators and struck by a devastating financial reversal. One man’s life is nearly ended by a gruesome attempted assassination; the other is scarred by a shocking and unexpected act of sexual violence.

Neither picture provides a comfortable, conventional evening at the cinema. And thank heavens.

At a time when plenty of interesting directors have eagerly taken on the first superhero movie or disaster epic that came along — and there is certainly nothing wrong with a nice paycheck — others continue to challenge themselves, and us. Martin Scorsese goes from one demanding project to another, moving from “Silence” to “The Irishman” to “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Christopher Nolan makes historical epics about complicated, controversial wartime events (“Dunkirk,” “Oppenheimer”) with only occasional breaks for head-scratching sci-fi (honestly, can you explain “Tenet”?)

And while the success of “Lady Bird” clearly offered Greta Gerwig bigger commercial opportunities, unlike many suddenly in-demand arthouse directors she refused to settle for the safe — daring, instead, to bring a modern, new approach to the classic “Little Women” and replace the inherent schlock of “Barbie” with feminist politics and witty cultural criticism. (Some terrific musical numbers, too.)

That both “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie” went on to be huge popular successes was even sweeter.

Will this season’s risky films have the same luck? Unlikely. The first installment of “Horizon” has already sputtered at the box office, and currently “Megalopolis” is attracting more debate than revenue. Although, building on its New York Film Festival showing, “The Brutalist” will undoubtedly see its official December opening greeted with rave reviews and various honors, it’s not a film for mass audiences.

But it is, like its fellow passion projects, a film that is clearly the one that the filmmaker wanted to make. And did make, without compromises. And that is a singular achievement that any serious film lover can applaud — and hope to see more of.