It was inevitable that both film critics and modern film buffs wouldn’t be fully united on Francis Ford Coppola’s latest magnum opus, Megalopolis, a highly sophisticated, dense, and visionary film that surely holds many shortcomings and flaws, but it’s an undeniably bold and dense work that’s worth commending for its ambition and audacity. Quite possibly the most expensive passion project ever created, no major studio wanted to take a risk of Coppola’s vision—even the director of some of the greatest films ever created (The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now) has a challenging time getting his films greenlit. This led to Francis Ford Coppola selling his winery for $500 million, where he used a quarter of that money to self-finance his sprawling vision.
The experience of this film is a jarring one, and there are many great moments. You will be in awe with many moments of it while being bored in other areas of the film. The art direction is spectacular; some of the CGI of the city looks duller than a 90s film. The best way to describe Megapolis is a spectacle that draws parallels to our modern days of wealth, narcissism, and the thirst for power. Coppola’s film also feels like a mixture of Shakespeare and Ayn Rand, except it feels more like the anti-Atlas Shrugged as it examines how our modern society is really no different than life in ancient Rome—which was a prosperous society for the wealthy where there was a large gap between the wealthy and the poor, and so much power was abused by elective representatives.
Courtesy Lionsgate Films
Set in the future, the saga begins with a wealthy architect named Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), who was given a contract to rebuild a sector of the slums of New Rome that will phase the poor out of the city and create more poverty on the outskirts as the city will become more exclusive to the wealthy. The materials he makes his buildings out of are Megalon, which Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) challenges Cesar’s vision because it doesn’t benefit the public interest. Cicero’s daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) defies her father’s idealism and ends up working for Cesar, and they fall in love with each other. Cicero is left distraught once Julia falls in love with Catilina, one that echoes a Montague-Capulet conflict between the old guard and the new guard in how the future will be conserved.
The conflict escalates further once Cesar’s former lover, Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), is a sleazy and duplicitous entertainment reporter who reports on celebrities and billionaires and their lavish lifestyles and materialistic offerings. Wow Platinum is certainly a social climber, and once Cesar finds love with Julie, she gravitates to Cesar’s uncle, Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight), a Trumpian banker, in which she ends up marrying him for his wealth. Wow Platinum ends up having an affair with Hamilton’s nephew and Cesar’s cousin Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf), a privileged opportunist that exploits the misery of immigrants and the poor for his own thirst for power by carrying out a populist campaign against Cesar where many are caged out entering the downtown metropolis. The future of New Rome remains uncertain as it’s on the verge of societal collapse.
Courtesy Lionsgate Films
This is a vision that Coppola has been aiming to film for decades, and it’s certainly an ambitious endeavor. IT recalls the grandiose ambitions of Damien Chazelle’s Babylon, Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales, and Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate of being sprawling, gargantuan movies that might not hit on every level, but you can’t help but admire the audacious scope of it all. Also, Coppola brings a lot of philosophy, history, and idealism into the film that could have been cynical, but it ends up on a hopeful note in how society can pave ways for a stronger future.
There are many memorable images and set pieces in the film as well. For instance, my jaw was dropping during an extravagant sequence involving a charity fundraiser where a virginal teen pop star (Grace Vanderwaal) performs a pop song titled “You Can See Through Me,” just before a spectacle where the rich are devouring foods, indulging in wine, as they watch wrestling bouts in a coliseum style. The set piece recalls the work of Federico Fellini with the decor of Michael Powel and Emeric Pressburger. There is another breathtaking sequence of Cesar debating Mayor Cicero, in which Cicero calls out Cesar’s arrogance and thirst for materialism over humanities needs of having a livable wage and safe roads, along with having roads, schools, and hospitals that benefit the entire city instead of just for all. Another memorable image is Mayor Cicero working at his desk as it sinks into the floor with sand to convey the uncertainty of New Rome’s future. There are also some moments in the film that drag on and that suffer from histrionics and overacting from Adam Driver that will be mocked in years to come. Then you have the much talked-about scene involving the love affair of Wow Platinum and Clodio Pulcher, where Wow Platinum dominates Clodio with her sexual power, and it’s a testament to just how fearless and open-minded an actress Aubrey Plaza is, and she shines once again in this role. The outcome results in a mesmerizing moment of Hamilton Crassus III acting out of jealousy after being double crossed.
There is no denying Francis Ford Coppola has always been a cerebral and ambitious filmmaker. Just about every film he has crafted has been artful, challenging, and idiosyncratic to some degree. He always delivered sophisticated ideas about society and the human condition into his framework. While Megalopolis isn’t a total success, it’s not a total failure either. The film takes risks, swings big, and while it’s not a grand slam, it’s quite a fascinating experience, nonetheless. I will be very curious to see how this film will be perceived years from now. My guess, appreciation will only foster as so many films being praised in the moment will be forgotten.
MEGALOPOLIS is now playing in theaters
Dreck, produced by an old egomaniac, is being passed off as cinema. A complete train wreck. While the film looks good, it is terrible. But at least Coppola is consistent, in not producing a good film in decades!!!
Some of the film is cringe worthy- the auntie wow scene, for example.
Having watched the live streamed pre screening panel last Monday night before the IMAX screening of the film., one can conclude that Coppola is so full of himself. Bogus claims that he used “cancelled” actors (voight has been working steadily for years and LeBouef got derailed because of his sexual antics- something Coppola is familiar with given the in set issues he was involved in).
1.5 of 4 stars
This is a man who made The Godfather and Apocalypse Now and there were times in this film that I thought I was watching his best film. It’s an undeniable mess, but on the whole I think its greatness outshines its messiness. And if nothing else, I’m glad I live in a world where any filmmaker is still willing to take a swing like this.
Looks really good I don’t get why people can’t separate actors personal lives with art but I can and I can definitely say this looks amazing and I’m looking forward to seeing it great review!!!
I had the pleasure of seeing this with Robert and I have similar feelings. While I always gave to admire creators who make ambitious works with big swings, this film could have benefitted with more consistent special effects and editing and also being broken up into two or even three parts.
I love the description that his films feel like a mix between Shakespeare and Ayn Rand!
I’ll still have to check this out
Robert you and I so often agree on movies, or substantially overlap. But I thought Megalopolis was a mess and, what’s worse, a pretentious mess.
People toss around the word “pretentious” to refer to art that is highbrow, intellectual, and difficult. Bergman’s “Persona” and “The Seventh Seal”, Tarkovsky’s “Stalker” and “Mirror”, Bela Tarr’s “Satantango” are often called pretentious because they are serious, grapple with challenging content, and engage with complex artistic and intellectual ideas. But not one of those films is pretentious – they are serious efforts by artists to deal with a story and ideas in a sophisticated way – narratively, thematically, spiritually, cinematically. James Joyce’s “Ulysses” is not pretentius — every word and idea in it has genuine meaning and content, albeit not accessible to everyone.
But the true meaning of pretentious is tied to its root, he word “pretense” – meaning something that uses a pretense of “highbrow” art, or cloaks itself in a veneer of intellectual or artistic sophistication, without actually seriously engaging with anything. It wants to show off, while actually being hollow. It wants to look serious, while never actually earning that seriousness. Reading James Joyce’s “Ulysses” is not pretentious, but carrying it around in your hand simply so people think you are reading it is pretentious.
Coppola’s film is utterly pretentious. Over and over, it alludes casually to other “high” art, in order to seem deep and complex, but without providing any real meaning or seriously engaging with the things it alludes to : references to Herman Hesse, Sappho, Great Expectations, etc. are thrown in over and over without any purpose, just to shout “ wow, how sophisticated it is!”. A ponderous, and ponderously intoned, deep voice-over from the very beginning vomits out with great pompousness a litany of banal drivel about civilization and the purpose of life as if it is speaking the words of a great philosopher and seer. Marcus Aurelius is dragged in with little meaning or effect, just to seem clever and make us think that what’s going on is deep. At one point, characters having an ordinary conversation about nothing suddenly and for no apparent reason start to speak Latin for a few seconds, and then go back to English – oooh, this must be smart, it’s in Latin!!! Is this all simply to hammer us over the head for the 100th time that this is a story that parallels the fall of Rome??
The narrative and filmmaking lurch from one thing to the next with no consistency of tone or perspective. The screenplay is full of howlers, meant to sound profound or poetic, statements like “A coat … smelling of sandalwood … citrus .. and secret male memories….” Ugh.
Perhaps Coppola was going for high camp, but the uncontrolled, self-indulgent, show-offy “ACTING” by Adam Driver, Shia LeBoeuf, John Voight and others was utterly cringey. Only Nathalie Emmanuel as Julia avoids the lure of the Razzies.
The look of the film belies the massive budget. Occasionally there are some lovely images – a hand in the sky reaching out of a cloud, the singer on a crescent moon floating in the sky. But mostly the images are banal and cheap-looking, like the worst CGI from the Avatar films.
The film fails to actually engage with the themes it purports to depict. Repeatedly the narrator and characters allude to a world that is “full of suffering, full of injustice”, yet never is this injustice shown, let alone depicted in a way that engages on a human or intellectual level. A few Antifa style activists are tossed in at the end to wrap up that little omission, but they are not personalized, their mission seems merely destructive, and they are quickly dispensed with when Coppola gets bored.
The last scene is so cringe-makingly sentimental and banal that I can only hope Coppola meant it ironically, though I don’t think he did.
And, finally, Coppola succumbs to the most tired, knee-jerk clichés about our culture in decline. We saw it in “Babylon” and many other films, and Coppola adopts it hook, line and sinker. Almost the first scene of the film tries to draw us into this “degenerate” world by depicting, guess what, a night club with pounding music where people drink a lot, take drugs (GASP!!), and women lick each others’ bodies and writhe with sensuality!!! We see cross-dressing men as a symbol of degeneracy and moral collapse and ridicule. And all this decline and degeneracy and corruption is redeemed at the end by, surprise surprise, a messianic Elon Musk-like megalomaniac, a conventional family, and a newborn baby representing “new hope”, all depicted with gauzy, romantic soft focus and swelling orchestral paint-by-numbers music, representing a Utopian future. Coppola’s overwrought “vision” of the “end of civilization” is not only cliched, it’s deeply regressive and conservative.
In the end, I can only quote one reviewer, who said that watching the film is like listening to someone corner you at a party and describe a dream they had, for two hours and twenty minutes. Torture.
Todd Sherman’s brilliant takedown cant be matched remotely. I totally agree with him and Marvin (whose review was also spot on). The film was a monumental abomination and worthy of comparison (in infamy) with BABYLON.
One of the worst films I’ve seen over the last ten years.
It would not call it one off Coppola’s best. It’s visually stunning but the movie tries way to hard by packing way to much in. I felt like I watching a historical video for a history class instead of a movie. The movie overall tries to hard to be this great Masterpiece instead being more grounded and letting the emotional tone of the story grab the audience. It’s also way to slay. I don’t think I will watch this again.
I saw this just last night in IMAX, which certainly enhanced the visual aesthetic. I did like how Coppola combined the elegance and class of antiquity with all the flash and noise of the modern age. To a lot of Americans, NYC is the highest echelon of society, the “place to be” and “where all the action is,” just as Rome was the place to be back in the ancient days. I thought Adam Driver’s performance was very engaging, bringing his own charismatic, standoffish demeanor to this mysterious, almost messianic figure with the unique ability to manipulate time – he’s like Bruce Wayne with a god complex.
Coppola has a lot of philosophical influence in Megalopolis, but in a not-so-obvious way, he seems to have some biblical influences included, too. I think that Cesar and Julia’s relationship could be comparable to the story of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. When we first see Julia (played by Nathalie Emmanuel), she is as depraved and lecherous as the rest of them, but when she meets Cesar, she “opens her eyes,” if you will, and becomes his one anchor to make his dream a reality. Similarly, Mary Magdalene was said to be a prostitute who became one of Christ’s followers and would eventually become his wife before his crucifixion. In stark contrast, however, Cesar is no “golden child.” He too is just as depraved, despite his endeavoring to combat his vices. I forget the quote, which was perhaps my favorite spoken line, but it went something like this: “It does not pay well to be good. It’s better to be bad.”
That’s just one of my thoughts. I’m not speaking from a preachy, religious POV, just from general observation.
Megalopolis is certainly a mixed bag, but I was pleasantly satisfied and fully invested with it. I would like to get a second viewing to hopefully understand more what all Coppola was trying to convey.