When news first began circulating that distributors found Francis Ford Coppola’s long-awaited passion project “Megalopolis” tough to market, people were quick to shrug their shoulders in response. How could a film by the legendary “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now” director be hard to market? Well, those who shrugged their shoulders had not yet seen “Megalopolis.”
What is “Megalopolis”? It is a sprawling epic, a madman’s dream, a dazzling insight into the mind of a restless creative. It is also quite clearly the work of a director unrestrained by financiers. Coppola famously mortgaged part of his vineyards and parted with over $120 million of his own money to be truthful to his vision of “Megalopolis,” a film that took him over forty years to put together. To briefly put it in context, Ronald Reagan was still the U.S. President when the director began working on the script for the film and Michael Jackson was on the top of the charts with “Thriller.”
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Perhaps the decades Coppola spent perfecting his white whale of a script bled into the film itself, which opens with Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) playing with his ability to freeze time. Catilina is an artist, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, a playboy, and a dreamer. He spends long afternoons atop skyscrapers, moodily staring at the labyrinthine city of New Rome below, fantasizing about his darling dead wife and the utopia he would have loved to have built for her still in life: the titular Megalopolis, a city within a city, made entirely out of the almost-magical substance that earned Catilina his Nobel prize, the indestructible megalon.
Catilina’s nemesis in this story is Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), a stern, conservative ruler who scowls at dreamers. As a leader, he is concerned with the now, not the ambitious delusions of tomorrow. He wants his people fed, employed, and productive, as long as it doesn’t interfere with his precious status quo. Outside his luxurious ivory tower lies a city filled to the brim with the desperate and the despondent, people who have long lost faith in traditional government and found in the prophetic madness of Catilina a much-needed glimmer of hope.
Uniting the two men is, of course, a woman. Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) is Cicero’s beautiful, impossibly smart daughter, who gravitates towards Catilina’s irresistible mix of intelligence and drive. Surrounding the leading trio is a parade of amusingly named characters: within Catilina’s family, we have the jealous, backstabbing cousin Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf), rich banker patriarch Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight), and a handful of cousins, sisters, nephews and murkier relations.
Orbiting the powerful clan are social climber journalist Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), Catilina’s driver and loyal sidekick, Fundi Romaine (Lawrence Fishburne), and the mayor’s wife, Teresa (Kathryn Hunter). Then, on the Coppola family side, we have the director’s sister Talia Shire as Cesar’s mother, Constance Crassus, Shire’s son Jason Schwartzman as Jason Zanderz, and Coppola’s granddaughter (and TikTok sensation) Romy Mars with a brief cameo as a high school reporter.
It is hard to delve into the specificities of “Megalopolis” without feeling like you are spoiling the joy of the surprise for those yet to witness it. Watching it oblivious to its many ludicrous twists and turns makes it a much more rewarding ride and, oh boy, are there many ludicrous twists and turns. Yet, one could read the script back to front and still not be prepared for the beast Coppola spent four decades concocting — a “Cloud Atlas” by way of “Amadeus” peppered with a touch of “Saturday Night Live” sketches and a drizzle of “Vanilla Sky.” A “One From the Heart” type of project amped to the nines. All that and more and also none of that, a film that pokes and prods at the elasticity of filmmaking while being deliciously self-aware and unrepentant.
Does it work? That is a question worth mulling over. At times, the film’s hyperbolic, untamed nature feels tiresome. Aimless, even. Coppola is far from timid with his message, inspired by the Catilinarian Conspiracy that aimed to boot off the reigning upper class in favor of a more democratic ruling and, still, “Megalopolis” goes on long stretches where it feels like it cares little about what it is saying. Such a conundrum begs the question of whether or not this is precisely the film’s intention, to prioritize form over substance, to make it painfully obvious how aware — and proud — it is of the farce of it all.
Between Plaza’s Platinum saying, “You’re anal as hell, Cesar. I, on the other hand, am oral as hell” as she kneels in between Catilina’s widespread legs and LaBeouf’s Clodio strutting through a modern coliseum fully in drag while claiming that “revenge tastes better while wearing a dress,” “Megalopolis” plays mostly as a fever dream. During the Cannes Film Festival’s press screening, the house lights went up, and a man walked onstage to simulate a conversation with Cesar onscreen, much to the bafflement of an audience who, at that point, didn’t believe it could be much more baffled.
The opening title of “Megalopolis” announces the film to come as a “fable,” and Coppola’s lifelong dream is indeed an unprecedented exercise in worldbuilding. From the dark alleys of New Rome where raggedy immigrants rally against the government to the lavish abodes of the rich and leisured, this fictional city is not unlike another famous imaginary place in DC Comics’s Gotham. Alas, instead of bat-eared vigilantes, people parade around in modern togas and flashy gold jewelry, suspended in the maddening reality of this land as an indestructible haven is raised from the ground by a man steadfast on living up to his namesake’s empire-building legacy.
Coppola said he likes to make films he doesn’t know how to make, as the film will often tell him what to do next. One has to wonder how that frenzied metaphorical conversation came about with “Megalopolis,” a film still playing on my mind as I write this, unsure if I have seen it or dreamt of it. I’m not yet convinced it works, but my goodness, am I thrilled it exists. [B-]
