It’s a film that has been in the making for over 30 years. It’s a movie so financially risky that no studio wanted to work with acclaimed director Francis Ford Coppola, leading to him having to finance its $120 million budget by himself. It is a film that has divided critics around the world ever since its premiere in the Cannes Film Festival. It is a movie with an onslaught of controversies, including a problematic production and misguided marketing. It is a movie that everyone thinks will inevitably fail in the box office.
It is the “fable” of Caesar Catalina (Adam Driver), an architect with dreams of rebuilding the city of New Rome — if New York City and ancient Rome were put in a blender — into a ‘megalopolis,’ providing a better way of life for everyone involved. The only person standing in his way is the corrupt Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who does everything he can to keep the people from supporting Caesar’s idea. Complicating matters, Cicero’s daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) becomes infatuated with Caesar and works to appease both sides while working towards building a utopia before it’s too late.
It is “Megalopolis,” a Coppola passion project whose title fits the scale of the film and its reputation. A work of unrestrained art where the ambition is far more interesting than the ideas it entails because, for all its bells and whistles, “Megalopolis” is simplistic.
Gleefully showing off its excess, “Megalopolis” surrounds itself in shoddy green screens, matte paintings and other special effects that range from charmingly strange to straight-up awful. Cinematographer Mihai Mălaimare Jr. does his best in working with these effects, creating some of the most breathtaking shots of the year and also some of the worst.
The cast, which includes actors such as Aubrey Plaza, Shia Labeouf, Laurence Fishburne, Jon Voight, Dustin Hoffman, Grace Vanderwaal, Kathryn Hunter and Talia Shire — along with many more actors that clearly wanted to be in a Coppola film — try their best with what they’re given. They all work well with their characters; the only problem is that their roles don’t feel like they belong in this world.
Plaza, giving a campy performance as power-hungry media personality Wow Platinum (yes, that’s her name), feels mismatched against the more serious acting of everyone else. The closest someone comes to matching her energy is Labeouf as Caesar’s megalomaniac cousin, though he gets more to do in this story while Platinum remains the seductress. Imagine how fun it could’ve been to see Aubrey Plaza play a fascist.
That mismatched energy of the goofy trying to mesh with the serious shines throughout. It is fascinating seeing what possibly influenced him along the years as he worked towards his final vision, including “Metropolis,” “Ben-Hur” and “Romeo + Juliet.” The combination of his previous styles, from the golden lighting and prestige of “The Godfather” to the arthouse tendencies of “Youth Without Youth” or “One From the Heart,” is captivating. This style has worked well before in his earlier works, but now “Megalopolis,” despite the interesting aspect of seeing a new Coppola film after all this time, is old-fashioned.
While the effects and style work as an homage to all the cinema that came before it, the story of “Megalopolis” leaves much more to be desired, its vague nature muddling the focus and ideas. Caesar is able to control time, a clear metaphor for the power of art and the love between him and Julia that never has a practical use. Characters appear and disappear without satisfactory explanation, either explained in a throwaway line or coming back after being long forgotten.
New Rome is apparently a city falling apart, a reflection on the fall of Rome and current divisions in American society that never goes anywhere. Besides the offices within City Hall and the clubs that the cast display their debaucheries in, the most that is seen of this grand city is the “bad part of town.” Any voice of the civilians is at best a glorified extra.
Even the conflict between Caesar and Cicero is often sidelined by the many other plotlines converging in their narrative. None of them fully develop into an engaging story, turning this supposed epic into a passive experience. By the time Coppola’s passion project ends, there is no catharsis or inspiration; there is only nothing.
And it’s a shame. Coppola, an extremely talented director whose work can be celebrated beyond being cinematic canon, gets in his own way constantly in “Megalopolis.” He fills the film with more ideas and themes than it can handle, transforming into a strange mess with an undercooked script. He wants the film to be his desperate cry, a last call for everyone to be more imaginative, to believe that there is hope in the future and that positive change is possible.
If only it didn’t come off as naive.
Whether Coppola developed those main themes in a way that didn’t just say “Why can’t we all get along?” or framed it in a way that didn’t have women reduced to passive roles as the men got to initiate the change — with the most powerful female character being seen as an antagonist — maybe he would have been on to something. Maybe if he allowed himself to listen to other people’s criticisms and noticed the bloated nature and reductive implications, then “Megalopolis” would transcend into the masterpiece he sincerely thinks it is.
Sadly, that can’t be done in reality. “Megalopolis” cannot be remade. It is doomed to fail at the box office and the best chances it can get is a cult following among viewers who admire its ambition. Because the sad part about this is that ambition is the only way this movie can be memorable.
Either that or Coppola makes the ultimate Director’s Cut that better communicates his vision. But there is only so much time.
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