By George & Josh Bate
Few films in history have as lengthy and tumultuous a journey to the big screen as Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis. The iconic director conceived of the film in 1977, near the completion of filming Apocalypse Now. Development kicked into gear in 1983 as Coppola completed hundreds of pages of notes, various parts of the script, and began to piece together the grand epic he envisioned. As things were beginning to come together, Coppola pivoted to other projects, including Bram Stoker’s Dracula and The Rainmaker, in response to various box-office failures. After a table read with the likes of Robert DeNiro and Nicolas Cage participating, the film was once again put on hold due to events in the planned movie sharing too many similarities to the recent September 11 attacks. Eventually, Coppola managed to make Megalopolis a reality by self-financing the film using proceeds he accrued from selling his stock in a wine company. The conversation surrounding Megalopolis has not stopped there. Premiering to divisive reactions at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Megalopolis has been marred with controversy surrounding a trailer for the film that used fabricated pull quotes and allegations of misconduct against Coppola on the set of the film. Now, after a historically rocky journey to the big screen, Megalopolis finally debuts. And the conversation about this grand epic is just getting started.
Megalopolis takes place in a fictional version of the United States that shares a number of parallels to the Ancient Roman empire. The film stars Adam Driver as Cesar Catilina, a genius architect with considerable influence, whose goal is to create a sprawling utopia using a futuristic material he discovered called Megalon. Opposite him is Giancarlo Esposito’s Mayor Franklyn Cicero, the mayor of New Rome determined to thwart Cesar’s plans. Falling in the middle of these two conflicting figures is Cicero’s daughter Julia (played by Nathalie Emmanuel), torn between her love for her father and her work for Cesar. Also in the mix is Aubrey Plaza’s Wow Platinum, an eccentric TV presenter and mistress of Cesar, and Shia LaBeouf’s Clodio, Cesar’s cousin who hopes to undermine Cesar from within the Catilina family.
Opulent and strange in equal measure, Megalopolis is undoubtedly a movie that will divide audiences. Coppola approaches his sci-fi historical epic with a grand ambition and loftiness of ideas seldom, if ever, seen to this extent in the history of cinema. What results is a film that admirably pushes all sorts of cinematic boundaries and that, while occasionally stumbling under the weight of its grand ambition, makes for a gripping, philosophical, cerebral, and captivating theatrical event.
Starting with the strange, there is an abundance of that in Megalopolis. From a character who inexplicably has the ability to stop time (an ability that the movie introduces and conveys with a bewilderingly nonchalant attitude) to a total abandonment of conventional modes of storytelling and exposition-setting to a jaw-dropping live participant element in which a person stands in front of the screen and trades lines with Adam Driver’s character, Megalopolis is anything but normal. And, in this sense, even if one finds the film to be too philosophical or pretentious, it will undoubtedly be received as boundary-pushing. For its sheer novelty alone, Megalopolis warrants a viewing (and maybe a couple repeat viewings just to soak all of the madness in). The film borrows from everything from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to classic Shakespearean texts to Ancient Roman history to the BBC Television series I, Claudius, but there is no doubt that this is one of the most original and innovative movies of all time.
Underlying this strangeness is a calculation and sense of purpose from writer/director Coppola. However bizarre the movie gets, every frame and sound feel so authentically purposeful. Coppola reportedly used an experimental style of filmmaking to direct the movie, which involved eliciting extensive improvisation from actors and making sudden changes to the script, and yet there remains a sense that every element of the film is exactly as Coppola envisioned. To see such a grand plan for a movie actualized by a director unaffected by the studio system and unhindered by influence is quite the marvel.
Much of the sense of purpose felt throughout Megalopolis comes from Coppola’s attempts to draw parallels between Ancient Rome and modern America. Some may view the film as taking place in an entirely fictional world that shares elements of Ancient Rome and modern America. Others may view it as taking place in an alternate version of history in which the Roman Empire never fell and evolved into something quite like the U.S. we know today. Either way, the movie repeatedly draws parallels between Ancient Rome and the U.S., critiquing the depravity underlying both empires’ excess and opulence. The messaging becomes muddled at times, and the film’s lofty philosophical ambitions don’t always work, but Coppola manages to successfully convey his central message here. Amidst the harrowing social commentary and critiques, there is a surprising hopefulness embedded within the film – a sense that, despite its flaws, humanity can actually overcome the political, social, and climate crises it has created. And, in a film that deals with so many dense themes and narrative elements, this hopefulness is delightfully refreshing.
Along the way to conveying that message, Megalopolis isn’t always the easiest film to follow. Rich, convoluted monologues and the lack of desire to do much world-building on the front end mean that Coppola’s film, at times, becomes narratively unwieldy and requires a moment or two here and there to wrap one’s head around everything. Megalopolis never becomes incomprehensible or unfollowable, although tighter writing may have allowed the film’s messaging to shine more brightly and clearly if liberated from the density in its narrative.
Leading the film’s impressive ensemble is Adam Driver. In his career so far, Driver has worked with some of the best directors of all time (Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg, and Michael Mann, to name a few), and now adds Francis Ford Coppola to his CV. Driver delivers quite the performance as architect Cesar Catilina, tapping into his trademark stoicism, but also a quirkiness and strangeness we haven’t seen from him before. Many of the film’s humorous moments come from Driver, such as an early line about being in a club that is delivered with such uncharacteristic playfulness. More broadly than Driver’s performance, Megalopolis is sure to generate some laughs, although how intentional all of these jokes are by Coppola is less clear.
Supporting Driver is an ensemble worthy of many plaudits, with Shia LaBeouf standing out as particular highlights. In a live Q&A presented before the screening of the film, Coppola discussed how he sought out several actors who had been canceled or who had garnered controversy for their political opinions as a means to show that, despite his political leanings and intentions, humanity is one family and that we can all work together. Without explicitly naming them, it’s clear that Coppola was referring to LaBeouf and Jon Voight respectively. LaBeouf’s real life controversies aside, the actor is superb in Megalopolis as the duplicitous cousin of Driver’s character. Deriving inspiration from John Hurt’s turn as Caligula in I, Claudius, LaBeouf creates a truly dislikable and incredibly manipulative villain out of his character Clodio. Controversy may surround the actor, but his ability to produce a variety of compelling and extremely organic, natural performances is still evident.
Also standing out amid the ensemble is Aubrey Plaza. Her character Wow Platinum goes in and out of the movie as it progresses, but Plaza manages to take full advantage of every moment she is on camera. Seemingly incorporating quirky aspects of her real life personality, Plaza crafts a performance that feels out of place for Coppola’s film and yet, somehow, it all works so well. Plaza brings an eccentricity that wonderfully complements just how bizarre Megalopolis really is.
VERDICT: 7.5/10
Megalopolis is easily the year’s most ambitious movie, a theatrical event that invites criticism and adoration in equal measure. Commendable for just how strange it is, the film sees Coppola push boundaries of cinema like never before and create a film that, while lacking the sheer class of some of his previous works like Apocalypse Now or The Godfather, makes for similarly captivating viewing. Coppola infuses all sorts of poignant commentary as he draws parallels between Ancient Rome and modern America in a story that, while being difficult to follow at times, excels in achieving some of the director’s lofty ambitions for the movie. Occasionally muddled messaging and dense plotting and dialogue are offset by how gorgeous the film looks and sounds, with Coppola crafting one of his most visually stunning films to date. Adam Driver, Shia LaBeouf, and Aubrey Plaza standout in an impressive ensemble cast and deliver performances uncharacteristic of what we have come to expect from the actors. Grand in its scale and ambitions, novel in its filmmaking approach, and hilarious (either intentionally or unintentionally), Megalopolis is an undoubted achievement from Francis Ford Coppola that makes the almost 50 year wait for it to come to fruition worth it.