Leipzig-Halle Airport plays a vital role in the transportation of military equipment, making it a strategic target for espionage.

Yaqi X.’s activities included monitoring shipments and people linked to a German defense company, which media sources suggest could be Rheinmetall, the country’s largest arms manufacturer.

Jian G., who allegedly received the information from Yaqi X., had earlier been detained for his role in espionage activities.

He reportedly worked as an assistant to Maximilian Krah, a member of the European Parliament representing the far-right party Alternative for Germany. Investigators believe Jian G. was involved in spying on Chinese dissidents in Germany and providing intelligence about European parliamentary affairs to Chinese authorities.

In May, the German Federal Prosecutor’s Office conducted searches in Krah’s office in connection with Jian G.’s activities. Krah is also suspected of having received money from Russian and Chinese intelligence services.

This is an audio transcript of the Life and Art from FT Weekend podcast episode: ‘Culture chat — Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis is a mess worth seeing’

Lilah Raptopoulos
Welcome to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos and this is our Friday chat show. Today we are talking about Megalopolis, the latest film by legendary director Francis Ford Coppola of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now fame. This film is Coppola’s labour of love. It took him more than 40 years, 300 script rewrites and 120mn of his own dollars to make. But despite a star-studded cast, including Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight and Aubrey Plaza, the film has been quite controversial and left audiences confused, delighted and enraged, maybe in equal measure.

[MOVIE TRAILER PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
At its simplest, the film is about an idealistic city planner played by Adam Driver, who’s trying to build a utopian city of the future on the ruins of what’s called New Rome, which is some mix of current day New York and ancient Rome. He’s fighting the city’s mayor, who’s a somewhat corrupt pragmatist, and he’s falling in love with the mayor’s daughter who’s caught between them. Today, we’re going to talk about the film and what we think this 85-year-old director is trying to say.

Let’s get into it. I’m Lilah in New York and I’m yelling “time stop” every time I want a second to think about things. Joining me from London, he’s leaping into the unknown to prove that we are free. It’s the FT’s film critic, the great Danny Leigh. Hi, Danny, welcome.

Danny Leigh
Hello, Lilah. Nice to be here.

Lilah Raptopoulos
So nice to have you. And with me in the New York studio, he’s reciting Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be” for no discernible reason. It’s the film critic and host of The Last Thing I Saw podcast, Nicolas Rapold. Welcome, Nick. Hello.

Nicolas Rapold
Thanks. Yeah, because it feels so good.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Because it feels so good. OK, so this is a film that a lot of critics wanted to love, but they seem pretty polarised. Danny, your review was a work of art. You called the film Coppola’s DIY fantasia. Maybe you can tell us, top line, just what you thought of the movie.

Danny Leigh
I mean, I hate to disappoint right off the bat, but it is an impossible question to answer. I mean, I saw the film quite recently. I didn’t see the film in Cannes, so I saw it in London on a kind of wet morning. And there were a couple of other critics there who were talking about the film — one who had seen the film in Cannes and one who hadn’t. And the one who hadn’t said, so listen, just before the lights go down, you know, what is this gonna be? Is this as bad as everybody says? And the critic who’d seen it before said, yeah, it’s pretty bad, but there’s stuff in it. And I kind of feel like that says it all. I just think, I came out 2.5 hours later and once I had and I have a lot to say about it, but I do also feel like it’s pretty bad, but there’s stuff in it.

Lilah Raptopoulos
I think it’s right. What do you think, Nick?

Nicolas Rapold
It’s true. I mean, actually, I was going to say, I think something similar to that just because I mean, the whole expanse of it is this sprawling kind of morass of drama and scenes that don’t always connect, don’t always move smoothly. But then you’ll get these, just eruptions of emotion and passion and weirdness. I mean, the weird thing for me is that obviously this movie is hugely personal and idiosyncratic, but I saw it twice now. I saw it once in Cannes. And then glutton for punishment saw it again in New York. And the second time I had to say, what is this reminding me of? And the weird thing is that maybe it was after, Danny, after reading your review where you described it, I think like it’s a science fiction melodrama. And I thought that phrase sounds like kind of Marvel movies a little bit.

There was something about this movie where, you know, I mean, the characters are having these kind of, first of all, like in the air effectively, half the time it feels like half of Adam Driver’s conversations are like on girders high up in a skyscraper. But, you know, they’re having these, like, high-flown conversations where it’s like, what are you really talking about? It’s the end of the world, but it’s also sort of nothing sometimes. And I’m saying that I do like the movie and enjoy a lot of it, but I’m also like, for what? You know, I don’t know.

Lilah Raptopoulos
You know, I feel quite intimidated to be with two critics. So this, I feel like this is gonna sound very blunt, my opinion about it, but feel free to temper me.

Nicolas Rapold
Be blunt. Movie needs it.

Lilah Raptopoulos
I just felt that this has been a year — even in the political spectrum in America — of great ageing men who should go ahead and just let themselves retire. I don’t know. I felt sort of like, you know, you’re allowed to get to the end of your career and think like, you know what, I did a good job. I said a lot. I’ve maybe said enough. I don’t need to say the last thing that I thought maybe I wanted to say. But that said, Francis Ford Coppola is like one of the greats. He went for it. It was clearly ambitious. I find that admirable always. And I had fun watching it, actually. It was like a great old, luscious, fun thing to watch. I still have no idea who I was supposed to be rooting for or what I was supposed to want. But yeah, I sort of left it feeling like in a weird way, like, if you both had come in strong to say like, this was actually brilliant, I would have been like, OK. Or have you had said, this is total nonsense, then I would have been like, OK. I just sort of felt like, sure.

Danny Leigh
Partly because you’re a perceptive person, Lilah, but also because both of those opinions are valid. And I think almost I mean, brilliant is stretching it, but there are images and there are moments in there that really stayed with me and not because I was sniggering at them, you know. So I think there is real vision and excellence in it. There’s just so much which is really quite explicitly bad as well.

I think I would be surprised and I would, you know, hand on heart, I would slightly question the judgment even of anyone, whether they were a critic or just an audience member, whoever they were, who went along and found Megalopolis dull and found it just kind of grinding and joyless because it’s . . . I just don’t think it’s that. I think it’s quite bad in places and it’s objectionable actually in a couple of other places, but it’s never dull. I mean, your point about old men is definitely valid. And it reminded me because it’s this sort of ongoing question about, you know, why did Coppola make this?

And I think it does rhyme with the situation we saw with Biden, you know, earlier in the year, if I could use that question about, you know, how hard is it actually? And I think the answer is it’s like the hardest thing in the world to step away from power and to just give . . . And particularly at that age where you are, you will be stepping away for the final time. So for Coppola to walk away from the film and leave it unmade is such I mean, I think there’s something so profoundly bleak about that. I think it had to be made and I was so, for that reason, as well as the fact that it’s sort of berserker and does have these moments of near brilliance to it, I’m also glad it exists. Because the idea that it just never got made and Coppola then just rode off into the sunset, you know, with his vineyard intact but with the film nonexistent, that’s kind of depressing.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right, he sold his vineyard, a part of his vineyard, famously to make this film. You’re right, it did have to be made.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

OK, so let’s do listeners a favour here and just attempt a plot description for anyone who hasn’t seen it just so they can try to visualise what we’re talking about. As you said, Danny, this film starts on the roof of the Chrysler Building with Adam Driver, this utopian stepping out and looking like he’s about to fall over and sort of saying “time stop” and freezing time and then stepping back on to the platform. And so it starts suggesting that there’s this man who has this like power that the rest of us don’t. And then where does it go? And then what?

Danny Leigh
And then he is. And then he is. And, you know, we are summarising quite radically.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yes, radically.

Danny Leigh
He is frustrated by, I think I said in the review, small minds. It’s certainly at first it’s bureaucracy that frustrates him and it’s the city mayor. So it’s New Rome, which is kind of New York and also ancient Rome in one. And you have the city mayor played by Giancarlo Esposito, who . . . yeah, it’s a kind of interesting character because he’s set up very adversarially at first because he is standing in the way of Driver’s utopian visions. But then when you actually hear Esposito, his character talking, I mean, what he’s saying is, I want instead of these kind of far-flung visionary dreams, I want jobs for people and sanitation and education, all of which I think are good things. And I think, you know, I think at times we are encouraged to think that jobs and sanitation are unnecessary trivia that actually great men shouldn’t really . . . and great civilisation shouldn’t really worry about. Now it’s something that I think by the end of the film I was a little bit troubled by that. But he is anyway at first he’s yeah, I mean all of this stuff is standing in the way and that’s the major rivalry which is set up is this rivalry for the sort of hearts and minds and the Bank of New Rome between the mayor and the bureaucracy and Driver’s, you know, visionary, utopian, maverick dreamer. Then, of course, there’s this Shakespearean complication, which is that he strikes up a relationship with the mayor’s daughter, who’s played by the British actress Nathalie Emmanuel, who I thought was quite good, actually. Again . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
She was pretty good. They all seem to be working very hard.

Nicolas Rapold
Especially Shia LaBeouf.

Danny Leigh
Everyone’s working so hard, right? I mean, everyone’s just working so hard. You can see the sweat pouring.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Totally.

Danny Leigh
And it’s sort of set itself up as this sort of there’s a political intrigue, there’s also a family intrigue. Everything becomes very operatic very quickly.

Nicolas Rapold
Yeah, I mean, city politics provides a big, like, template for the movie, or at least for me, for understanding the movie. Just the kind of big personalities, you know, the way tabloid vies for like, legitimate policy issues and what you’re paying attention to. And then the fact that in the end, nothing really seems to get done anyway. Or maybe a mayor gets convicted or indicted, for example. I think it was amazing to me that this movie’s release almost coincided with the indictment of New York’s own mayor.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. Right.

Danny Leigh
It’s amazing. It’s almost like Coppola orchestrated the whole thing.

Lilah Raptopoulos
I know. And it does feel sometimes like we’re living in a fever dream here in New York like the film.

Nicolas Rapold
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, just in terms of like painting a word picture as it were for listeners, I mean, a big part of this movie is you’re on like a skyscraper or you’re at a party. There is always this heightened reality that you’re part of. You know, even when you’re in like ostensibly just like a quiet bedroom boudoir moment, there’s like scheming that’s going on, you know? So there’s never a point that isn’t in some way, you know, heightened.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you both touched on something that I found to be the most confusing thing about it, which is that I just really didn’t know who I was rooting for in a way, or whether the person I ended up rooting for was the person I was supposed to be rooting for. For example, as you were saying, Danny, the mayor, I actually kind of liked the mayor and I ended up sympathising with the mayor. And I thought, you know, is Adam Driver meant to be Francis Ford Coppola? And are we meant to sort of like support him in his dream for this utopian future? Because this utopian future is the future of creativity or the future of cinema or the future of people sort of being able to make beautiful things and come together and all that. Or is Adam Driver, Elon Musk? And like, he has this utopian vision, but he’s a kind of a horrible guy. Yeah, I didn’t know where I was supposed to be landing basically, ever.

Danny Leigh
Well, again, I think the answer is probably both. I mean I think certainly and without getting into the realm of spoilers, I mean, as the film plays out, actually, I think you are very much supposed to throw your emotional weight behind Driver and behind the kind of the cause of artistic freedom and Randian individual will at all costs. I mean, that seems . . . that seemed pretty open and sharp actually. (Inaudible) halfway through the movie. And the Elon Musk-ness of it, I think is part of that. I mean, it’s interesting. In using that word in the widest possible sense politically, because there’s a lot of stuff which you assume that has been kind of folded into the story in the last few years, you know, before it finally went before the cameras about populism. And I think the Trumpist kind of mindset. I mean, Coppola is not a fan and it’s kind of held up for scorn and ridicule.

But interestingly, I mean, that Muskian worldview, that becomes the centre of the film, really. And I don’t know. Yeah, I mean, I think it makes quite a lot of us feel quite uncomfortable about that idea of the master engineer. And actually, you know, probably not just New Rome itself, but the entire future of the species should best be handed over to like, a visionary engineer who has this team of kind of flunkies scurrying around. And he’ll just say in a sort of Elon Musk kind of way, we must be interconnected. And then people go off and sort of act on that. You know, it’s like, get right on that.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. Everybody’s just like stepping on to each other in a very literal interpretation of interconnected.

Danny Leigh
Yeah, exactly. Whereas you look, I mean, wow. I mean, you look at the history of the internet that has unfolded in the time that Coppola has been trying to get this film made. And I think you actually come away thinking, I’m not sure interconnection is what we need more of. I think possibly a bit less of that. But yeah, I think I mean, so yeah, I think it is very much Driver as a proxy for Coppola and then does run into you know, who knows whether that was explicitly going through Coppola’s mind. But you know, he does become very Elon by the end of the film.

Nicolas Rapold
Yeah. Well, it’s such an interesting question, thinking about, you know, what it might refer to, what it might be saying about now, today’s world, because what is now for a movie that’s been being made for 40 years, you know, I mean, the things that felt most now to me in the movie were comments that actually were kind of mostly in voiceover. Now that I think about the, Laurence Fishburne’s wonderful voiceover to the movie narrating it, is that people are losing faith in institutions. So that’s the kind of backdrop to the tragedy of the great man here.

It’s not just that people aren’t listening to him, but that people just don’t even believe in the democracy, that he’s kind of creating a factual physical structure for people to live in. And that rings true, you know, I mean, and that also rings true with the kind of confusion within the movie, which is that, you know, it’s not like people decide one day, you know what? I just don’t really care about democracy. It’s more just like there’s so much stuff going on, you know, there’s so much distraction.

But yeah, what is now? Because if he started at least talking about the movie in the early ‘80s, you know he would have been coming out of 1970s New York which is like kind of the classic picture of decline and fall of a city that was a template for like Tim Burton’s Batman, for example. And in that case, he’s looking ahead at like Reagan years coming ahead of him. And maybe he’s questioning that idea of empire and thinking that might eventually fall. But then he keeps at it. And then by the ’90s or 2000s, what does he think? He had footage shot a little bit before September 11th, which then, you know, kind of upends everything, the whole puzzle pieces again.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. It’s true, even his vision of utopia in the film is this sort of like giant bouquet of flowers with these like, golden moving walkways, like this is what he wants New York to be. And it really looks like some combination of like an architect’s rendering of Walt Disney’s Tomorrowland, like The Jetsons maybe, and Singapore like, it feels sort of like this funny combination, the world fair. It’s like an old version of what the future would look like. And I looked at it and I thought like, I don’t know, I kind of prefer regular New York.

Nicolas Rapold
Yeah, well, Danny, there’s another thing in your review that I really liked that you mentioned. You know, in some ways it’s like a silent film, in some of the, maybe like the style of it and obviously it’s right there in the title, he’s not just gonna do Metropolis, he’s going to do Megalopolis, you know.

Danny Leigh
Exactly right. Which is such a kind of a late 20th, 21st century take on that. So it’s like, Yeah, exactly. Metropolis but bigger, but mine.

Nicolas Rapold
Yeah, and Metropolis, you know, when you go back and watch it, it’s, yeah, it is like that. It’s like this, you know, The Jetsons kind of thing a little bit. And it has this idea of the people above and the people below, you know, I mean, one thing that is tough for me in the film is how it thinks about people, the people it’s ostensibly talking about. It has this really, I mean, this idea of like, just like the rabble.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right, right.

Nicolas Rapold
And I don’t know what it is about movies maybe lately, maybe always. I don’t know. They just seem to have a problem, like visualising people or like, how do we represent the people that this movie is ostensibly a drama about, you know, affecting them, you know?

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. What do you mean? What other examples do you mean?

Nicolas Rapold
You mean of movies now that have trouble with that?

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah.

Nicolas Rapold
Well, the other thing I’m noticing, and I hope to write about this, I don’t think this idea . . . is that movies just don’t have a lot of people in them now. And that’s maybe partly a pandemic thing. Maybe that’s partly still, I don’t know what, cost-cutting, but you can watch movies and something you’re like, what’s going on? Like are there no other people in this city? Why is this block empty? And I see that in movie after movie, and it’s probably maybe economic considerations. Maybe everything in the backdrop is done through digital composites anyway. So they’re kind of an afterthought. But it has a real effect because it’s like you’re not seeing people, you know, think of a ’30s, ’40s movie. You’re constantly seeing people running around. I mean a metropolis is crawling with people, for one thing. So yeah, I don’t know. I did think about this one.

Lilah Raptopoulos
You’re right. And Megalopolis is kind of . . . they’re all just like masses screaming and . . . 

Danny Leigh
Yeah, it’s so true. And it’s really . . . No, no. I’m really glad this has come up because it’s a really glaring problem with the film, I think. I mean, because what Coppola is doing is reinstating the epic with everything that comes with that. And so the epic is not this little three-hander that’s sort of shot in one apartment in Manhattan because they’re actually making it for a couple of million. I mean, this is Coppola’s world. And so it’s interesting what gets into that world. It’s like Noah, you know, what gets let in and what doesn’t.

And yeah, people, ordinary people very much don’t. And the reason it’s so glaring is because actually they’re a really important part of the story. You know, we first see Driver on top of the Chrysler Building but I think the next time we see him, he’s there blowing up all of these apartment blocks. And we suddenly realise, kind of later in the film, it’s sort of mentioned in passing, that actually those were people’s homes and he wanted them out of the way because he’s doing that Robert Moses thing of like clearing New York, New Rome to make something more beautiful and wonderful. But actually, all those people have been displaced. And again, it’s weird. I mean, Coppola makes a lot of decisions that I think are just there to keep the running time down.

And one of them . . . But genuinely one of them is that like there’s no meat on the bones of that idea of wait, like, all of those New Yorkers who now don’t have a place to live, where did they go? And it’s almost comical how uninterested Coppola is in . . . And actually and this is one of the things I like much less about the film, there is also something quite weirdly small about it. And I think it’s this, you know, I’m interested in the people in this room and I’m not really very interested at all in anybody who’s not in this room with me.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, and those are actually all people with power.

Nicolas Rapold
Yeah, right.

Danny Leigh
Yeah.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lilah Raptopoulos
And so I want to ask both of you, why do you think . . . I know a lot has been written and thought about this, but I’m curious what you think. Why do you think he made this film? Like, he sold part of his wine company to finance it. He’s defended it fiercely since it’s come out. You know, it doesn’t seem like he cares whether the movie is a commercial hit or not. That’s not the point. Why do you think he’s so invested in it?

Nicolas Rapold
I mean, I think there are different ways to answer that. I mean, one is almost just a constitutional way. I think when you’re a director and your whole life, like the machine of your mind and your will has always been directed towards finishing the project, he almost can’t not. He’s like built to do that by now, and he’s gonna do that till he drops. So that’s part of it. I mean, part of it is, I think he thinks he’s making a statement, you know, about the world as it is and about, you know, inevitably about great men as well. I mean, this is a guy who actually made a movie called Tucker: The Man in His Dream, you know. Like, he’s not gonna shy away from making movies that their scope sounds almost a little hokey. You know, you have to say. But he still thinks there’s value in it. So I guess he thought it was good. I don’t think that it was just like he was just like white knuckling, I just got to get this done and then I can go back to making wine or something, you know? Yeah, I think he wants to have a say about the way the world is today.

Danny Leigh
Yeah, because I think there’s two possible projects or ideas that would stay with somebody that long and one is gonna be a biography of somebody who is just of profound importance to Coppola or whoever, whatever director this is, who spends 40 years, you know, dreaming of a film and then finally getting to make it. It’s somebody who has changed their life and they’ve always wanted to tell that story. Or over the period of time where the film is not getting made and is endlessly in development and is getting rewritten and redrafted constantly, it ends up becoming about everything and at that point, you know, you get . . . so Coppola is in his forties when he starts putting this thing together, you know, and both for him personally and for the world, you know, he keeps appropriating, you know, everything which is going on.

Everything is about Megalopolis for him. It’s the prism through which he lives, you know. So and world events are getting kind of fed into this vast machine that he’s created. Yeah. How are you gonna walk away from that? And so at a certain point and I think, you know, with the money, it did get to a point where, had he spent any more, he would have actually risked bankrupting his family. But he took it like right up to the line and said, well, the movie has swallowed him whole, essentially, you know, And so he sort of, so it has to be made.

Lilah Raptopoulos
And when you say it’s everything, where did you both land on that? Like what, I would say, what is the moral of this movie? But like, what are the morals of this movie? It seems like there are about seven.

Danny Leigh
Yeah, exactly. I mean, it feels unfair to narrow it down to one. It’s that . . . And also, I mean, it’s difficult to talk about because it’s sort of there in the for me at least in the final scene, which is at once one of the most eye-poppingly hokey, like, impossibly cheesy cornball things I’ve ever seen in my life and also weirdly moving and sort of semi profound. And without giving away specifics, I mean, I think it’s again for me, this is the best of the movie. The moral is about the future and the importance of the future, as as trite as that sounds.

And I think if an 85-year-old, of anyone of 85 talking about the future, there is a certain melancholy to that and a certain power to that, that says the future isn’t just important but is possible. And it is quite striking. I mean, when was the last time we had a vision of the future on film that was anything other than profoundly dystopian? There’s a version of the story where the wisdom resides in the grizzled, old, you know, patriarchal figure. And what’s interesting about the film is it’s, we haven’t talked about its sexual politics, which are absolutely jaw-dropping. And it’s like a deeply patriarchal film, actually, kind of like he’s a young patriarch. I mean, there is that. I mean, it’s not so there isn’t this sort of, you know, there’s this grizzled figure with tablets of stone passing them down. I mean, actually the hope of the film and the talent in the film lies with people in early middle age, you know, which seems to, which actually seems quite radical thing for an 85-year-old director to say.

Nicolas Rapold
Yeah, I would totally agree with that. I mean, there’s a sense in which the movie is kind of like a $120mn version of a dinner toast, you know, where it’s like, I just want everyone to feel better, be happy. You know, I love my family is here. You know, it’s this sort of thing. And I can’t really, you know, I can’t really begrudge an expression of hope like that because there is also like the dark flipside to it, which is, you know, like, a movie like Joker, you know, where there are people and they’re all raving maniacs and, you know, who’s to say which one is a more accurate depiction of the voting body at the moment? Maybe it is half and half. I don’t know. So yeah, I think it’s very much an expression of hope. It’s very much a faith in creativity. And sometimes I think that’s also offensive to people actually. Maybe that’s maybe an American thing, especially, I don’t know, That somehow that’s a threat. I don’t know.

Danny Leigh
I think . . . we do we do that in Britain, too! Don’t worry.

Nicolas Rapold
OK. Just to tear people down for trying that. And then there’s just people love, even whether or not they think it’s going to be one, a flop. You know, like there’s, you know, there are books, like Greatest Flops of All Time, you know, this sort of thing. So there’s like ready-made.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

My last question for both of you is just was this film worth the struggle? You know, 40 or something years in the making? Are we glad it was made?

Nicolas Rapold
I would say yes. Yes. Unqualified yes. Just because, I don’t know. I mean, you want people to go all out and do something crazy. And not every movie has to be perfect. Some of the perfect movies are the most boring ones. And sometimes the mistakes are interesting, too. And look, I mean, I’m also just enough of like a, you know, movie fan where it’s like, new Francis Ford Coppola, how may I not gonna be sort of excited about that? At the very least I’ll rewatched, you know, The Godfather or Apocalypse Now or you know The Conversation and I’ll take that excuse. And so yeah, I mean I guess there’s also, being that this is the Financial Times, I guess there’s the monetary question of whether it’s worth it. And that’s hard to say, but millions are spent on much worse movies . . . 

Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s true.

Nicolas Rapold
 . . . that do not have a personal stamp and . . . 

Danny Leigh
That should absolutely be the tagline, that they’ve missed a (inaudible) . . . Millions are spent on much worse movies.

Nicolas Rapold
So what the hay, dot dot dot.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Why not?

Danny Leigh
I feel the same way. I mean, I feel the same way. I feel like . . . I mean, actually, it’s so rare to find a movie where you can, hand on heart, say, which I can. I’d like to see this film again fairly soon. You know, you’re right. It was interesting what you just mentioned that actually, if nothing else, it made you think of Coppola’s other films and made you revisit them mentally. So it has, you know, genuinely it served a purpose in that sense.

And also I do want to see how this film holds up in 20 years’ time, you know, if we’re all (inaudible) . . . It’s almost too easy. It’s like the narrative around it being a flop, the narrative where then in 20 years’ time actually, everyone discovers it was this work of unparalleled genius after all. That’s a little too pat, I think, but I’m interested . . . I’m really sincerely interested in what I and two, the three of us and everyone else in the world makes of Megalopolis in the future.

Again, it comes back to the future and you can’t say that about, you know, every film that comes along and we’re here talking about it and we could actually, I think, you know, we’ve had a semi-coherent, for me, fascinating conversation about the film that you can’t do that about a lot of films and we could say, we could very easily sit and talk for like another two hours about the movie. So and this is not something which often happens.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, that’s true. Well, Danny and Nick, thank you so much. We will be back in just a moment for more or less.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[THE RUN THROUGH PODCAST TRAILER PLAYING]

Welcome back for More or Less, where each guest says one thing they want to see more of or less of in culture. Nick, what do you have?

Nicolas Rapold
I mean, this is maybe more of just a way of taking in culture. And I guess I just want to see more of just pulling a book off the shelf that, you know, it doesn’t have its everything paved out for you, you know, in terms of, you know, everything about it, you know, and you know the author super well or even that it came out last year. I mean it sounds very mundane, but you know, I’m reading like a book of fairy tales right now from 1920s Japan, and it’s just very refreshing. And it sort of shifts your framing of things and is a form of what I think about some newer books as well. So yeah, it might sound mundane, but it’s reliably been a way to kind of reset for me.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, don’t just book, pick the buzzy book necessarily, yeah . . . I love that one. What is the fairytale book?

Nicolas Rapold
The author is Keiji Miyazawa. They’re not straight-up fairy tales. They’re this kind of enigmatic sort of stories, but they have a lot of talking animals. I think that’s why I went back to it as well, because I was like, you know, I just wanted another way to think about animals.

Danny Leigh
That’s fantastic.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, that’s fantastic. Danny, what about you?

Danny Leigh
I guess it sort of spins off the conversation we’ve had about Megalopolis, but I think it can be applied more widely and I think there should be more three-star reviews and not necessarily formal reviews. All of our approach to culture. I think that the militantly dispassionate three-star is something which there needs to be more of. I just, you know, you could get quite pompous and earnest about this quite quickly and talk about, you know, the curse of polarisation and the world being at its own throat the whole time. But also, I just think, I think taking an approach which, you know, no longer wanting or expecting to be saved by a piece of culture or a work of art, but also no longer wanting to grind it into the dust and laugh at it. I think we should strive for that a bit more to just kind of, to just settle for the militant lukewarm water.

Nicolas Rapold
Yeah, I would second that. Sometimes it feels like people want to work themselves up about something. Like, it’s OK if you’re just fine with it, too.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Well, and the funny thing is, even like, even, Danny, your three-star review about Megalopolis didn’t mean that you felt “eh, whatever” about, right? It didn’t mean, it was totally dispassionate. And there’s hours of conversation behind those three stars.

Danny Leigh
Yeah. I mean, sometimes, I mean, “Meh” is a really valid and profound response, but also just that . . . I mean, listen, I mean, full disclosure. I mean, I spend my life, you know, in a state of a sort of mixed-bag-ness and feeling kind of vaguely ambivalent about pretty much everything. And it just certainly feels with culture like, yeah. And then it’s, the this and the that of it is what is fascinating, surely. And I mean, if something just, you know, if something just confronts you with its own status as a masterpiece straight away. I don’t know. I tend to think that’s a little boring. And actually the three-star approach to life is a bit more nutritious, I think, in the long term.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yes, I think so, too. Mine is very short. It’s a less. It’s really a PSA. It’s less last-minute Halloween costume decisions. It’s a PSA to start thinking about your Halloween costume now. Because if any of you have ever been to one of those, like, temporary spirit Halloween costume places on Halloween, it’s like the most depressing place in America, maybe the world. So do it now. Buy your wig. You know, buy your wig on the internet before you have to put it on your head.

Nicolas Rapold
And yeah, it’s true. But it also makes it more fun because it becomes like this creative project, you know? Don’t be a Megalopolis. Don’t take, you know, don’t leave everything to last minute.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, exactly.

Danny Leigh
But wait, surely. I mean, I have to ask now from however many thousands of miles away. I mean, so what are you two wearing for Halloween?

Lilah Raptopoulos
It doesn’t mean I know yet. I just realised on my walk in today that it’s time for me to decide because last year I was Marty McFly from Back to the Future because it was easy to just like put on a red vest and wear jeans. And it made me sad. I thought, I think I’m better than that.

Nicolas Rapold
Yeah. I also, I too do not know yet, we’re still in the development stage. Still looking for funding. I don’t know how it’s how it’s gonna go.

Lilah Raptopoulos
Just sell a couple bottles of wine (inaudible) for your costume. Danny and Nick, this was really so much fun. So interesting. Thank you for coming on the show.

Nicolas Rapold
Thank you.

Danny Leigh
Pleasure.

Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s the show. Thank you for listening to Life and Art from FT Weekend. Do check out the show notes this week. We have Danny’s review of Megalopolis. We have a link to Nick’s movie newsletter and podcast. Also in the show notes, you can find my email address and I’m on Instagram @lilahrap where I love chatting with all of you about culture.

I’m Lilah Raptopoulos and here’s my wonderful team. Katya Kumkova is our senior producer. Lulu Smyth is our producer. Our sound engineers are Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco, with original music by Metaphor Music. Topher Forhecz is our executive producer and our global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Have a lovely weekend and we’ll find each other again on Monday.

Ministers are not obliged to return donations given to them since taking office despite the decision by Sir Keir Starmer to pay back more than £6,000 worth of gifts and hospitality.

The Prime Minister said he would return gifts accepted by him since entering No10 after a row over the number of free tickets and clothes he has accepted.

Among those returned were six tickets to see Taylor Swift in concert at Wembley in August as well as money for clothes.

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner declared £836 worth of gifts relating to a spot in a DJ booth at nightclub Hi Ibiza.

Rayner was invited into the booth while on a personal holiday over summer and is not understood to be planning to pay the money back.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy accepted £2,300 worth of hospitality from Tottenham Hotspur FC to watch the north London derby in September, alongside the PM.

Among other ministers to accept gifts were Welsh Secretary Jo Stevens – who had two tickets to the England v Australia T20 International, worth £957.60 – Commons leader Lucy Powell – who accepted two seats for the Ashes worth £600 – and Sir Chris Bryant, tourism minister – who was given two tickets to the opera valued at £302.

Starmer and his family had already been to see Swift in June, during the first stint of her UK tour, but the PM accepted more tickets to the show on 15 August 20 August.

He also returned four tickets to the races and a clothing rental agreement for his wife, Lady Victoria Starmer.

But No10 sources said that there was no implication of wrongdoing, because everything had been declared, and therefore no expectation other ministers would have to follow the PM’s example.

The announcement from No10 that Starmer would pay back some of the donations was met with frustration from some within the Labour Party.

“It’s ridiculous that this story is still going on. It’s very disappointing for those of us who worked so hard to get this government in,” one Labour insider said. “Repaying a bit of the cash does nothing. They’re just giving this story legs.”

Another party member said that the issue had reached voters in the same way that the Covid-19 lockdown parties under Boris Johnson, known as “Partygate”, did.

“It’s cut through massively, just as much as partygate did. When we’ve gone out… it’s come up with everyone we’ve spoken to without fail,” they said.

“I see no benefit to them returning the money. They already accepted the freebie. Paying for it now doesn’t undo the damage. I just wish they hadn’t let this story get away from them.”

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And questions have been raised about the handling of the messaging from within Downing Street.

One former No10 source said: “Paying back just six grand is almost the worst of all worlds. You’re immediately going to be asked what about the rest? Obviously he didn’t fancy digging that deep into his pocket.”

Announcing the decision on Wednesday, No10 said: “The Prime Minister has commissioned a new set of principles on gifts and hospitality to be published as part of the updated ministerial code. Ahead of the publication of the new code, the Prime Minister has paid for several entries on his own register.

“This will appear in the next register of members’ interests.”

A snap YouGov poll, conducted on Thursday, found 79 per cent of respondents thought it was right that the PM had repaid the money.

But Chris Hopkins, political research director at polling firm Savanta, suggested that – in allowing the story to continue running – damage was being done to voters’ perceptions of the relatively new government.

“The Prime Minister trying to walk a donations scandal tightrope in a technocratic manner was always destined to fail, because the public will never see the argument for politicians being wined, dined and treated to opportunities that would otherwise cost hundreds of pounds – even if within the rules,” he told i.

“But the impact of this is all Labour’s doing, and much of it appears to come down to bad comms. They’ve let a story run, and run, and when you thought it had gone, they’ve reminded the public that there was perceived wrongdoing in the first place.

“Drawing public attention to bad news is, well, bad, and it’s a habit Labour need to get out of before an actual opposition exists to further hammer negative messages home to the public.”

No 10 have been approached for comment.

Mark Zuckerberg’s effort to avoid being dragged into the political arena ahead of the upcoming US presidential election is leading to a fierce debate as to whether Meta’s billionaire chief is going too far to placate critics such as Donald Trump.

Zuckerberg has spent recent weeks on a public effort to show he is above the partisan fray ahead of November’s poll, saying he had made the “political miscalculation” since 2016 of taking the blame on issues for which Facebook and Instagram were not responsible.

Election experts, civic integrity groups and former staffers told the Financial Times they were concerned Meta had rolled back certain election safety initiatives across the social network since 2020, while Zuckerberg last year embarked on a “year of efficiency”, cutting thousands of jobs at the platform under pressure from disgruntled investors to rein in costs. 

“I think it’s a low-key national emergency,” said one former elections staffer at Meta, who questioned whether the company had the “institutional capacity” to respond to major election threats.

Several people familiar with Zuckerberg’s thinking have said he is motivated by a desire to distance Meta from politics to focus on his artificial intelligence and metaverse ambitions, noting that since 2020 the company has sought to reduce the amount of political content served by its algorithms.

Meanwhile, the focus on efficiency and AI has helped boost Meta’s share price, which has risen 68 per cent this year to all-time highs, giving the company a market capitalisation of nearly $1.5tn. Zuckerberg’s net worth reached $200bn for the first time on Thursday, according to the Forbes Billionaires List.

Nick Clegg, the former UK deputy prime minister who heads Meta’s global affairs, now makes the majority of decisions on election policy, one person says. 

“[Mark] keeps trying to make people happy so they leave him alone and it’s just not going to happen,” said Katie Harbath, a former policy director who worked on Meta’s elections strategy for a decade. “On the one hand he’s right, he’s been blamed for stuff that wasn’t his fault. On the other hand, if you want to have an impact it comes with messiness.” 

Zuckerberg’s new approach comes after years of scrambling to contain criticism from politicians and the public over Meta’s impact on society, and to navigate internal and external battles over how the platform should treat elections and candidates. 

In a letter to the Republican-led House judiciary committee in August, Zuckerberg accused the Biden administration in 2021 of repeatedly pressuring Meta to “censor” certain Covid-19 content during the pandemic. He said he was “ready to push back if something like this happens again”.  

Zuckerberg has insisted he aims to be politically “neutral” in this election cycle and “not play a role one way or another — or to even appear to be playing a role”.

Critics say this messaging appears designed to placate Trump, noting that the Republican presidential candidate has repeatedly railed against — and even threatened to jail — the Big Tech chief.

“This is more of a shift in his political calculation on the balance of power in Washington and who he has to appease, rather than any underlying reality,” said the former elections staffer. 

Another former employee who had worked on Covid efforts said many who had been on the team at the time felt like the letter was “a slap in the face”, given they were trying to save lives in unprecedented circumstances.

Others argue Meta has pulled back from some of its misinformation efforts and reduced transparency, citing its decision to allow ads denying the result of the 2020 election and its shuttering in August of CrowdTangle, a tool long used by researchers to analyse the spread of content on the platform. 

One report by media non-profit Free Press found Meta was one of the worst social media offenders when it came to backsliding on policies it had in place for the 2022 midterm elections and cutting jobs relative to the size of the company, second only to Elon Musk’s X. 

Ed Bice, chief executive of non-profit Meedan, which builds digital literacy tools and provides some services to Meta’s WhatsApp, said Meta was no longer supporting “large-scale collaborative misinformation monitoring and response programs this year,” instead focusing on less expansive “artificial intelligence”-driven trust and safety work.

“The very clear, present and reasonable concern is that we will have a disputed election . . . and the fact that we don’t have a co-ordinated effort looking out across the information landscape investigating and responding to those reports,” said Bice. Meta was among the platforms used to spread widely debunked stories that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating residents’ pets. 

A Meta spokesperson said in a statement: “These are manufactured criticisms. Helping protect the US 2024 election online remains one of our top priorities, and we have around 40,000 people globally working on safety and security — more than we had during the 2020 cycle. Our integrity efforts continue to lead the industry.”

The platform will run its Election Operations Center during the November vote to address potential abuse in real time, and also has an independent fact-checking programme as part of its efforts to tackle viral misinformation.

Arie Perliger, professor in security studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, noted the platform had been largely successful in purging extremist groups in recent years. Meta last month banned Russia’s Rossiya Segodnya, or RT, from its apps “for foreign interference activity” shortly after the US government indicted two employees of the state-backed media group for their alleged involvement in a disinformation campaign.

Zuckerberg was sucked into partisan politics in the wake of the 2016 election after it emerged a Russian troll farm had used the platform for a pro-Trump disinformation campaign. He bolstered investment into election security going into the 2020 election and invested $400mn to support electoral infrastructure via the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, his philanthropic group.

However, Meta was blamed by the left for playing a role in the violent uprising of the January 6 Capitol riots in 2021, accused of allowing the narrative that the election was stolen to rapidly spread across the platform.

From the right, he faced increasing allegations the company was staffed by liberals and deliberately censoring conservatives. His Chan Zuckerberg investment was interpreted as a ploy by some Republicans to boost the Democratic vote, earning the donations the nickname “Zuckerbucks”. A bipartisan government commission later reviewed the donations and concluded unanimously that they were apolitical.

This election cycle, Trump has loudly lambasted Zuckerberg, warning in July that if re-elected president he would “pursue Election Fraudsters” and send them to “prison for long periods of time”, before adding: “We already know who you are. DON’T DO IT! ZUCKERBUCKS, be careful!”

Separately, days later, Meta announced it was lifting the remaining restrictions left on Trump’s Meta accounts following his suspension from the platform, adding that they had been a “response to extreme and extraordinary circumstances”. 

Zuckerberg also publicly described Trump as a “badass” for his reaction to an assassination attempt and called him to apologise after the platform mistakenly took down photos of the attack. 

Trump said in a television interview that Zuckerberg had told him on the call he would not endorse a Democrat out of respect for him. Meta said the founder was already going to refrain from endorsing a candidate. 

Zuckerberg is no longer flanked by Sheryl Sandberg, Meta’s former chief operating officer and a longtime Democrat who was for years the political face of the company. Brian Rice, a former legislative assistant to Democratic senator John Kerry, is among those handling relationships with the left, while Joel Kaplan, a prominent conservative known for overseeing its relationships with Republicans, remains Meta’s vice-president of global policy.

Some suggest Zuckerberg has been emboldened by X’s Musk.

“With Elon Musk coming and literally saying ‘fuck you’ to people who think he shouldn’t run Twitter the way he has, he is dramatically lowering the bar for what is acceptable behaviour for a social media platform,” said David Evan Harris, the Chancellor’s public scholar at California University, Berkeley and a former Meta staffer. “He gives Mark Zuckerberg a lot of permission and leeway to be defiant.”

CHANCELLOR Rachel Reeves could announce several changes that may affect people on benefits when she delivers her first Budget later this month.

The head of Britain’s finances will unveil the Government’s latest plan for spending and tax on October 30.

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At the beginning of September, the Chancellor cautioned that the Budget could involve “difficult decisions” on tax, spending and also benefits.

Ms Reeves has previously warned of a £22billion financial black hole in the UK’s finances, which she claims was left by the former Conservative government.

This grave figure has led many experts to believe the upcoming Budget could spell further misery for thousands living under the cosh.

But what exactly could it mean for the 20million Brits who claim benefits?

Benefits could increase in line with inflation

In previous Budgets, benefits like Universal Credit have been increased in line with September’s inflation figure.

This was seen in the Autumn Statement delivered last November, with households on benefits ending up £470 better off as a result.

However, this has not always been the case.

The previous government froze benefits for four years in the 2010s, in a blow to people who are eligible for the help.

However, experts predict that the Government will uprate benefits in line with September’s inflation figure, which will be released next month.

Experts at Pantheon Macroeconomics are forecasting that it will be around 2%.

Cuts to benefits spending could be announced

The Chancellor is understood to be mulling a reduction in the amount the state spends on benefits.

This rumour has been further solidified by comments made by Prime Minster Sir Keir Starmer.

At the Labour Party conference in Liverpool last week, the PM said there has to be “trade-offs” between maintaining the welfare state and supporting those in need.

He admitted there would be “hard cases”, but that the Government and business must join forces to get people clocking on again.

There are around 2.8million people who are long-term sick, with numbers having surged since the pandemic.

Future cuts to working-age benefits and tax rises have also been hinted by health secretary Wes Streeting.

Working-age benefits provide financial support to individuals and families who are of working age.

There are a number of different types including Universal Credit, Jobseekers Allowance, and Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).

Mr Streeting told the New Statesman that the Chancellor could make cuts to these benefits to help plug the £22billion black hole in the public purse.

It comes after the Labour government axed the £300 Winter Fuel Payment for pensioners who are not on means-tested benefits.

Mr Streeting said: “There are other choices to come and these aren’t just Rachel’s choices to face up to, these are the choices of the whole government.”

Crackdown on benefits fraud may be detailed

A crackdown on benefit fraud could also be outlined at the upcoming Budget.

The Government has previously promised to crackdown on fraudsters and get more people into work as part of a shakeup to the benefits system.

This could mean new laws will be introduced so that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) can ask banks to report fraudulent activity, for instance if a claimant has more than £16,000 in savings, or how much they earn.

Under the proposals, the DWP won’t be able to access bank accounts directly, and the exact information they can request is still to be confirmed.

The department could also be handed more powers to recover debts from those who can afford to pay it back but have avoided doing so.

Sir Keir Starmer said in his speech at the Labour Party conference: “If we want to maintain support for the welfare state, then we will legislate to stop benefit fraud.” 

Change to PIP payments may be confirmed

Personal Independent Payments (PIP) are a benefit for people who are under State Pension age and need help with day-to-day life because of a long-term illness or disability.

The previous Government began a consultation on reshaping the payment which swiftly closed a couple of weeks later.

At the time, there were suggestions that PIP payments could be changed to vouchers or one-off grants.

In August, Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall unveiled a “Back to Work” plan.

As part of this move, changes to disability benefits are expected to be introduced to help cut NHS waiting lists and help people get back into work.

This has led many to believe she could roll out the changes floated by the Tory government to help aid her plan.

The Treasury has been contacted for further comment.