Movie Review – Megalopolis
Principal Cast : Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel, Giancarlo Esposito, Aubrey Plaza, Shia Labeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Kathryn Hunter, Grace VanderWaal, Chloe Fineman, James Remar, DB Sweeney, Isabelle Kusman, Bailey Ives, Madeleine Gardella, Balthazar Getty, Romy Mars, Haley Sims, Dustin Hoffman.
Synopsis: The city of New Rome faces the duel between Cesar Catilina, a brilliant artist in favor of an Utopian future, and the greedy mayor Franklyn Cicero. Between them is Julia Cicero, with her loyalty divided between her father and her beloved.
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Debauched. Decadent. Opulent. Gorgeous. Describing Francis Ford Coppola’s forty-years-in-the-making vanity project, funded with his own personal fortune and meeting a very mixed reception by audiences who bothered to see it, as anything but incredible is to do a disservice to those wondering what it’s all about. It’s a heady mix of futurism, historical artefact, orgiastic visual feast, and Shakespearean melodrama, achieved thanks largely to the film’s breath-taking imagery despite a confusing, often impenetrable narrative and competing subtextual elements that drag the viewer away from the film’s own potential. My initial social media review suggested that “[Megalopolis is] an astonishing piece of confused cinematic hubris that will eventually become a cult classic”, and my reflections some days after viewing it remain undiminished: the scope and grandeur of Megalopolis are sublime, however the execution – much like Tinto Brass’ oft-reviled 70’s Roman-themed epic Caligula – is a matter of personal taste, leaving the viewer befuddled by the histrionic, near insane level of potential, and left aghast at its own inadequacy.
Megalopolis is set in the futuristic city of New Rome (formerly New York City), where Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), a Nobel Prize-winning architect with the ability to stop time, envisions a utopia called “Megalopolis.” Battling against him is the conservative and morally rigid Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who champions immediate economic relief over idealistic urban transformation. As Cesar seeks redemption for his tragic past, which includes his wife’s mysterious death and personal struggles with guilt and alcoholism, he forms a bond with Cicero’s idealistic daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), who shares his belief in creating a better future. Other central figures include Cesar’s manipulative ex-mistress Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), who conspires to control Cesar through political and financial means, and the wealthy yet frail Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight), whose fortune is a key to funding the ambitious project. The story is further complicated by the populist rise of Cicero’s nephew Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf), who transforms from a champion of the people to a dangerous demagogue opposing the utopia. Amid political intrigue, personal betrayals, and public upheaval, Cesar’s grand vision is tested by the very society he seeks to elevate, culminating in a battle for the soul of New Rome as utopia and dystopia collide.
Coppola is undeniably a man with a singular vision, a singular cinematic voice. His legacy of American film classics is the stuff of legend – Apocalypse Now, The Godfather trilogy, Bram Stoker’s Dracula – and the fact he ponied up his own cash to make this thing is the kind of ballsy auteurism the industry frankly needs more of. Although Hollywood shunned this lengthy, spectacularly arrogant work of art only makes the filmmaker that much of a renegade; he struck a deal with Lionsgate to distribute the film in the USA but everywhere else kinda fell through, but he persevered, getting his magnum opus into cinemas following a very lengthy (and troubled – various VFX companies abandoned their work on the film midway through) production process. The film famously debuted with an in-person actor interacting in-auditorium with Adam Driver’s character on the screen, a factor overcome with a more traditional in-film replication of the same, while Coppola himself has had a number of off-screen controversies in the aftermath of its riotous introduction to the world. That is to say: the genesis, creation and birth of Megalopolis is almost worthy of a feature film itself.
Yet, Megalopolis remains pure, undiluted Coppola, filled with salacious, wonderous imagery that will captivate and enthral, as much as its confrontational themes will elicit much consternation for each viewer. The film’s utopian scope and vast world-building isn’t what I expected from Coppola’s late-period passion project, having conceived of the idea as far back as the early 80’s, and having gestated in various forms ever since. Despite the rampant confusion and insane narrative storytelling, populated by odious and unlikeable characters, Megalopolis is a gargantuan operatic big-swinging-dick project that absolutely puts itself up on the screen so completely, there surely couldn’t be much left on the cutting room floor. The basic plot of the film is confusingly obscure, a discordant mish-mash of idealism, pragmatism and power-hungry back0-stabbing, vaguely in the shape of a cerebrally adrenalized Romeo and Juliet archetype – star-crossed lovers of opposing houses, and all that… – led by a magnetic Adam Driver and a surprisingly effective Nathalie Emmanuel (having recently seen her in John Woo’s bastardized The Killer remake, I had doubts she’d be capable of delivering the requisite emotional journey undertaken here) and an almost unbelievably rancid (in a good way) Shia LaBeouf. Elements of Scorsese’s The Aviator, Coppola’s own Dracula, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and even Damien Chazelle’s Babylon are present within Coppola’s frenzied, shoot for the moon effort here, as he grasps from iconography and historical Roman subtext to infuse his alternative-universe New York City story with golden-hued affection.
I wouldn’t say the story or the themes Coppola presents are particularly clever or even well written (an end-credit note of thanks to Coppola’s son Roman, as second-unit director, is telling, given the chaotic nature of the production) and you almost get the sense that a lot of what occurs on-screen was ad-libbed or at least made up on the fly. Certainly the tabloid reports indicated a lot of last-minute rewrites and surprise shooting locations occurred throughout, much to the consternation of both cast and crew. Inevitably, the genius of Coppola’s vision begins to manifest as this opulent, often bloated feast for the senses winds along: from Adam Driver’s self-absorbed Cesar, Shia LaBeouf’s acidic Clodio, Aubrey Plaza’s sexy-as-hell broadcaster-slash-gold-digger Wow Platinum, through to Jon Voight’s cringeworthy old banking magnate and Giancarlo Esposito’s mayoral figurehead, Megalopolis wants nothing for expense being spared on an absolutely stacked cast, if only anyone here was given something meaningful to do. LaBeouf and Plaza seem to be having the best time, chewing scenery with their respective characters and having a blast being the grit in the well-0iled society on display here, while Laurence Fishburne narrates the whole thing with the ponderous overtones of an ancient historian dictating the fall of Rome to a whimpering scribe.
As much as I desperately wanted Megalopolis to work, unfortunately most of it… well, it doesn’t. The film is an absolute mess, from start to finish. Emotionally vacant, overstuffed with convoluted Roman-era themes and populated by varying historical visions – notably, Coppola was affected by the events of September 11, 2001, and this is represented in a final act montage to New York’s worst day – the film never connects with the viewer. Hell, half the time I suspect Coppola himself had no idea what he had, and was probably hoping as long as everything looked amazing audiences would lap it up. Trying to be too clever for his own good robs Megalopolis’ sublime production value of any legitimate emotional connection, basically turning the whole film into an empty spectacle only really good for gazing in wonderment as Coppola burns through nearly $150m of his own cash to make it. Exactly what he is trying to say is lost amongst the green-screen effects and widescreen “let’s make this epic” photography, more’s the pity. There’s a Caligula-level arrogance behind the camera here that can’t be avoided; unfortunately, there wasn’t a restriction on budget or scripting the director had to conform to, thus his ego ran rampant with every idea he’d ever had, resulting in this tonal mess and narrative dodecahedron that is impossible to comprehend. There’s aspects of Megalopolis that feel nuanced, but a literal avalanche of underdeveloped and half-baked subplots and backstory that we never have fully fleshed out. At least, not for my liking. Asking the audience to fill in the blanks for a film this stuffed with imagery and ideas is like Monty Python asking Mr Creosote if “he’d like some more?”
Megalopolis is an absolutely wild ride. A magnum-opus disaster of gargantuan, epic proportions, I’m reminded of the sprawling DW Griffiths silent films or a Terry Gilliam movie. This is hubris run rampant, a visual orgy of themes and Coppola’s fears and strident klaxon calls for change (most of which is one-the-nose pointed at American exceptionalism) that lacks restraint, much to my dismay. As a bloated, declamatory exercise in excess, few films of the 21st Century would stand anywhere near this thing for complexity, and I absolutely applaud Coppola for taking all that legendary credit and making the film he wanted to make, critics and studios be damned. The end result will undoubtedly become a cult classic, the kind of yell-at-the-screen midnight event film fans will enjoy for years to come, and mining its excessive overplotting and unexplored thematic recesses a smorgasbord of online discourse for the next several decades. Megalopolis is the kind of wild filmmaking swing I wish more directors had the opportunity to give us; as much as the film is an absolute dumpster fire of ideas and writing, it’s a staggering example of its own excess against a diatribe of the same in the modern world. Impossible to recommend, Megalopolis is an astounding film in every regard and an awful one in all the others.
Who wrote this?
This review is right on the money! I remain overwhelmed by its scope, ambition, and failure to be comprehensible. Still, a must see!