When it was first announced that legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola had sold his $650 million wine empire to self-fund his passion project of over 40 years because no studio wanted to, it read as another sad signifier of Hollywood’s hesitancy to invest in original concepts.
In hindsight, it was a decision that made total sense.
Coppola’s sprawling 138-minute epic “Megalopolis” finally hit theaters this week, introducing audiences to the film they thought they would never see and certainly will never forget. That is, only if they choose to watch it, which given the film’s split reviews, disastrous opening week box office sales, and the onsetting stench of generational flop-ness might just mean it’s a bit too weird.
The film boasts one of the most eclectic casts in recent memory with stars like Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza, and Lawrence Fishbourne among the likes of controversial actors like Shia Labeouf, Dustin Hoffman, and Jon Voight, as well as up-and-comers like SNL’s Chloe Fineman and former America’s Got Talent winner Grace VanderWaal.
The plot isn’t traditional by any means either—it’s packed to the brim with elements from ancient conspiracies, Shakespearian monologues, and references to the Roman empire. Set in a futuristic version of the American city, “New Rome,” where modern New York meets Ancient Rome, visionary architect Caesar Catalina (Adam Driver) struggles against the conservative Mayor, Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), in his quest to revolutionize the city and create a utopian state of “Megalopolis” with the magical material, Megalon.
And while that brief exposition provides the ostensible framework for the narrative, Megalopolis is anything but straightforward. Catalina’s ambition is embellished by his developing romance with the mayor’s brattish daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), his sudden and inexplicable ability to stop time, and a quickly developed and then abandoned satellite crash apocalypse plotline, all against the backdrop of political upheaval carried out by duplicitous television reporter Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza) and the libertine Clodio Pulcer (Shia Labeouf), meant to emulate the fall of Rome while also evoking the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.
The film is an absolute mess of disparate elements and bears decades of ideas and script changes on its sleeve, though not necessarily in a bad way. This was Coppola’s intention from the beginning. Branding itself as a “fable,” the film is clearly meant to carry allegorical weight with the way Coppola tries to tie America to a fallen empire of the past. In execution, it is so loose as to emulate poetry more than anything.
The dialogue is largely unintelligible and directly adapted from Roman philosophy, at one point delivered in Latin with subtitles. No shot in the film ever feels like it takes place in a real setting, a mix of amateurish CGI, green screening, aggressive green color-grading, or Art Deco production design. The film’s overall ethos, while producing very striking stills and sequences from time to time, never really applies ancient Roman history as something beyond aesthetic relief.
Coppola is dipping his toes into a bag of tricks he isn’t used to for “Megalopolis.” Only his fourth film shot digitally, the composition is also a complete departure from his more famous naturalist style. For as surreal as his more striking films like “Apocalypse Now” and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” can be at times, no one would mistake them in style for a Brian De Palma or Terry Gilliam film, as could easily be done here.
“Megalopolis” is edited together like one continuous montage, mercifully keeping the epic moving at a breakneck pace, but packed with bold stylistic elements in extreme Dutch angles, fish-eyed cinematography, split screens, 2D animation, and in one of the most talked about sequences from its premiere, a fourth wall breaking moment where an actor stands up to talk to Catalina on screen, which was even replicated in wide release by recruiting actors to sit with the audience. It also includes loaded imagery from Confederate flags and Swastikas to Nazi documentary footage throughout its runtime.
So much is being said, and in so many ways, the film quickly devolves into an assault on the senses.
In a panel discussion alongside filmmaker Spike Lee and actor Robert De Niro streamed before early screenings of the film, Coppola as much as said this was the intention, that the film is meant to create a dialogue about modern issues where “no questions are to be not permitted.”
The tricky part though of making any film where the message is so central to its whole point is that you need to really nail that message for it to work. Coppola’s filmmaking bears its artificial underbelly so proudly that suspension of disbelief becomes impossible or rather irrelevant as does viewing “Megalopolis” as a traditional film. All that is left is an evaluation of whether it succeeds at being a good parable.
Coppola built this movie the same way his protagonist built his “Megalopolis”—though feeling the weight of his legacy, perhaps made his approach more ambitious than Catalina’s construction project—housing great debates about contemporary issues.
Like Catalina, Coppola, for all his Roman influence, is a Socratic figure, obsessed with asking unanswerable questions in hopes of provoking a debate that will save the world. In the movie, Catalina concludes a society where debates about progress can be had is a utopia. Coppola clearly wants to use his film to have this debate too. The difference lies in delivery: Catalina builds his city. In the film he saves the world.
And while that answer requires everyone to live in a weird plant city with magic travelators that resemble “The World If…” meme, it is certainly better than Coppola’s filmic resolution to his great debate, which is to answer none of the questions that the film has raised up until that point and only ask more.
By the time the credits roll, it is hard not to see yourself in the frustrated screams of the protesters who called for Catalina’s death asking where his promised utopia was earlier in the third act as you search for any shred of clarity in Coppola’s insane hodge-podge of a philosophy lesson.
When Coppola was criticized for using actors like Labeouf and Hoffman, who have been accused of sexual assault, or Voight who was largely blackballed from Hollywood for his conservative views and support of Donald Trump, Coppola defended his decision. He claimed he intentionally cast controversial performers to dispel the idea that this would be a “woke” film, transcending political boundaries in what he argued was a show of unity and the power of a collective humanity. Though this defense may be tainted by Coppola’s own alleged inappropriate actions during filming, the film ends with a Pledge of Allegiance-adjacent mantra, driving at unity.
Which all in all lends itself to the strangest contradiction “Megalopolis” has. It’s a film that so desires to bring everyone together to hear what it has to say, only to say nothing, because it’s trying to comment on everything: philosophy, science, creativity, morality, class, etc.
According to legend, Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who Coppola admires as an inspiration for the film, had a servant to follow behind him and whisper “You’re just a man” in his ear when he was praised in the streets. It is clear that Coppola had no such voice behind him in the creation of his $120 million self-funded, allegedly drug-fueled, middle finger to Hollywood of a passion project.
Coppola thrived during the ‘70s era of auteur-driven filmmaking when a visionary director could fight and win against the studio system, but here, he is a man out of time as his protagonists of Classical Antiquity, trying to bring that same gonzo creative energy to a period in film history where studio control and profit margins motivate safe bets and franchises.
So there is something endearing about Coppola taking his last shot, hedging none of his bets, and going all in on his singular creative vision with his own money on the line. It’s just a shame the film may be too avant-garde for anyone but him to appreciate.
