Megalopolis (2024, dir. Francis Ford Coppola)

by Jack Martin | Sep 28, 2024

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 138 mins

UK Distributor: Entertainment Film Distributors

UK Release Date: 27 September 2024

WHO’S IN MEGALOPOLIS?

Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Kathryn Hunter, Grace VanderWaal, Chloe Fineman, James Remar, D.B. Sweeney, Isabelle Kusman, Bailey Ives, Madeleine Gardella, Balthazar Getty, Romy Mars, Haley Sims, Dustin Hoffman

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Francis Ford Coppola (director, writer, producer), Michael Bederman, Barry Hirsch and Fred Roos (producers), Osvaldo Golijov (composer), Mihai Malaimare Jr. (cinematographer), Cam McLauchlin, Glen Scantlebury and Robert Schafer (editors)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

An ambitious architect (Driver) sets out to redesign a monumental city…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON MEGALOPOLIS?

Our world is more divided than ever. Nobody can seem to agree on views regarding politics, international conflict, general bigotry and other pressing matters, while those in power or seeking power hope to tear their subjects apart through misinformation and blatant dog-whistling, further cementing the divide. There is but one hope that can finally bring us together as a species: the fact that absolutely nobody in their right, sane mind can make heads or tails as to whatever in the hell Megalopolis is trying to do.

Fair play to Francis Ford Coppola for actually getting to make the film on his own terms. It’s been well-documented that he self-financed the $120 million production after spending decades developing the project, and God bless him for firmly committing to his uncompromisable vision to the bitter end. But there is such a thing as being granted too much creative control, to where the ultimate execution is nothing but isolating and even self-indulgent. Neither of those words or phrases even begin to describe how much of an ambitious mess Megalopolis is, a film that is visionary with a capital and heavily stylised “V”, but in every other aspect one of the most confounding cinematic fever dreams since they adapted Cats to the big screen.

A surefire sign that a film like Megalopolis is all style and no substance is that I still have no idea what this movie is actually supposed to be about, even having both seen the film and read online summaries of it afterwards. It appears to be set in this parallel dimension version of New York, here called “New Rome”, which is run by the corrupt and unpopular Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Espositio). For whatever reason, Cicero has it out bad for Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), a famed architect who has developed a revolutionary new element called “Megalon” – and, inexplicably, has the ability to stop and start time by mere whim – which he intends to use to create a new utopia in the ruins of the current city.

At first, that appears to be the main plot. But then, it starts introducing several other strands, and countless other characters, until it becomes an absolute stew of madness.

There’s Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), Cicero’s socialite daughter who begins spying on and eventually falls in love with Cesar. Then, it introduces the high-profile marriage of elderly banking titan Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight) and his much younger lover, famed reporter Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza). At one point, characters gather in full-on Roman costuming at a Colosseum-like arena with wrestling, circus acrobatics, and performances by teen pop stars, where elderly men bid heavily to maintain said pop star’s virginity.

An old Soviet satellite comes crashing down and causing a near-apocalyptic event in the city. Driver’s Cesar suddenly delivers the full “To be, or not to be” monologue from Hamlet in front of old-timey reporters. An eyebrow-less Shia LaBeouf transforms into a far-right fascist leader before having Plaza’s character sit on his face. The whole thing is narrated by Laurence Fishburne, as the Alfred to Cesar’s Bruce Wayne, and who is apparently omniscient since he knows everything that is going on around or far away from him.

All of these things genuinely happen in Megalopolis, as well as so much more that I’m either forgetting to mention, or I simply don’t have the space within my word count.

It is as insane as you can get without being officially committed to your nearest asylum, and I’m in two minds over whether to respect Coppola’s ambition or to be somewhat terrified by what else he might have in that odd mind of his. On the one hand, the filmmaker is just running with the craziness of it all, which to a degree I can respect since there are precious few filmmakers out there who are as eager to hold their pure vision close without letting studio interference get in the way.

But from a conceptual perspective, Megalopolis is so consumed with appearing and sounding as artsy as it possibly can, to where it becomes almost unbearably pretentious, that it completely neglects to make any of its characters or numerous competing plots feel at all compelling or interesting, or even operating within any sense of logic. Its grandiose ideas, from its metaphorical modern retelling of the rise and fall of Ancient Rome to whatever the hell is going on with LaBeouf’s character, collapse within themselves as Coppola never stops throwing at the wall whatever bonkers idea he can seemingly improvise on the set, which for a film that has reportedly spent almost fifty years in development is shocking that there are still only, to use the words of a certain former President, concepts of a plan.

As you’re sitting there with an eternally confused look on your face, as weird fantastical imagery keeps popping up on the screen – such as Driver and Emmanuel suddenly taking an elevator up to a giant clock among the city skyline – while well-established actors make complete fools of themselves with stunningly awkward line deliveries that no Oscar-winner can improve upon, the question arises: why isn’t this clearly terrible film more fun to watch?

Megalopolis has all the ingredients for a so-bad-it’s-good cult classic like The Room or Showgirls, yet very little of it inspires the kind of endearing mockery that those films did, even as it arguably delivers more insane moments than both of them combined. Perhaps it is too self-serious to allow such light poking at its expense, or maybe it’s because some of its themes and concepts are not particularly easy to stomach (remember that sub-plot about a teen pop star’s virginity being effectively auctioned by elderly male patrons? There’s something pretty gross about that, especially with some of the recent on-set allegations that Coppola has faced). Either way, it’s unlikely to inspire any Rocky Horror Picture Show-style special screenings any time soon.

Without even the so-bad-it’s-good moniker to fall back on, Megalopolis is bound to be seen as a spectacular failure in the history of Hollywood, a big-budget folly that only comes around once in a decade like Heaven’s Gate or Battlefield Earth where more people remember its absurd costs and behind-the-scenes drama than they do the film itself. I almost want to give it an extra star just for its undeniable ambition, but I feel that to do so would be to give this movie more praise than it perhaps deserves.

No film that has Jon Voight disguising a crossbow between his legs as an erection, or one where the sure-to-be-eternal line “You are anal as hell… but I am oral as hell” is uttered with a straight face by Aubrey Plaza (the one actor to somehow emerge largely unscathed), should earn more than the singular star it is given, even if it’s come from the mind of a visual madman like Coppola.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Megalopolis is a confounding disaster from Francis Ford Coppola, who trades in complex storytelling for increasingly bizarre but empty visuals and insane half-formed ideas that can’t even gift it the identity of a so-bad-it’s-good cult classic in the making.