Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis is a moviegoing experience in a category of its own. My 9:00 pm IMAX screening on the Saturday of opening weekend was attended by maybe a dozen others, half of whom would walk out before the movie was over. I can hardly blame them; the movie is bizarre and features plotlines that are introduced and never again addressed, nonsense dialogue, jarring editing, theatrically histrionic acting, and long hallucinatory sequences. Such an untraditional film does not lend itself well to appraisal or analysis—everything in the film is open to interpretation, when possible—but I believe it to be imaginative and radical enough to at least try to explain its merits.
The plot may be the most straightforward aspect of the film. Megalopolis is framed as a “fable” that takes place in an alternate America approximately 1,000 years in the future. Taking place in the crumbling city of New Rome, the film is set against the backdrop of the late Roman Republic, with the political turmoil of the late Republic mirrored in the film’s competing political factions.
At the centre of it all is Cesar Catalina (Adam Driver), an architect with the ability to freeze time who longs to create a utopian city—Megalopolis—using Megalon, a material of his own design, thereby rescuing a decaying civilization from inevitable collapse. It is apparent that Coppola intended Cesar to be his stand-in: Cesar is often shown in a skyscraper viewing his creation through a lens, is obsessed with high culture, and clashes with institutions which impede the fulfillment of his vision.
Pit against Cesar is Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), a traditional politician who represents a cautious view of society that seeks to please people’s needs. Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel), the mayor’s daughter, turns New Rome’s politics on its head when she falls in love with Cesar, thereby prompting Cesar’s jealous cousin Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf) to start a fascistic movement aimed at toppling Cesar. Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voigt), Cesar’s uncle and an influential banker in New Rome, falls for Cesar’s former mistress, TV presenter Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza). The oddly named Platinum oscillates between comic relief and undercutting New Rome’s most powerful family.
Coppola’s primary concern with Megalopolis is the fulfillment of an auteurist vision he has held onto for nearly a half-century. Inspired by Coppola’s boyhood love for early science fiction features, such as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Megalopolis has gone through several rewritings and reimaginings since it was conceived in 1977. Originally intended to be a Wagnerian opera, the film began production twice, halted first by a disagreeable studio system and then by the September 11th attacks. It was while adhering to a strict exercise regiment following an appearance on Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown that Coppola began listening to some of the table readings from 2001 as a cure to his boredom, prompting him to personally finance the film’s production using money from his successful wine ventures. Watching Megalopolis, it is clear just how deeply personal the film is.
Megalopolis is, fundamentally, a defencse of the beautiful and the anti-utilitarian as the cure for a civilization indifferent to its fate. The central theme of the film is that human progress is suffocated by crumbling institutions, an apathetic population overly enamoured with mass culture, and the consolidation of power among a few elite families. But in spite of, and because of, these inhibiting forces, those who believe they can create something bold, challenging, and stimulating have an obligation to do so. In Megalopolis, the titular utopia is not depicted nor even described in detail; rather, it is intended by Cesar to simply initiate the dialogue that he hopes will revive the moribund New Rome. This relationship between Cesar and his fictional city mirrors the relationship that Coppola has with film: both are overactive, romantic minds who believe their art brings out what’s best in humanity.
Literary and philosophical allusions are everywhere in Megalopolis. From Petrarch to Rousseau to Joyce, Coppola draws on the many creative influences that he has collected over his life. In one particularly stunning scene, Julia and Cesar sway atop steel beams suspended thousands of feet above the city—an homage to Goethe, who said that architecture is frozen music. Cesar is described as “a man of the future so obsessed by the past.” The same can be said about Coppola, who quotes Sappho in the same movie that centres a utopian city to be constructed out of a material that can also heal bullet wounds.
Visually, Megalopolis is difficult to describe; think Spy Kids meets Metropolis. The generous use of digital images might be jarring—even gauche—to some viewers, but it is also responsible for some of the film’s most stunning visuals. One particularly memorable scene features a dismayed Cesar driving through New Rome’s slums, with giant, collapsed statues of Lady Justice sprawled over the decaying architecture, despairing over the city’s wealth inequality. Another gorgeous—yet unsettling—sequence captures the crashing of a satellite into New Rome, enveloping the city in an orange hue, skyscrapers painted black by the shadows of a frenzied citizenry.
Megalopolis’ distinct style goes beyond even its themes and visuals. Rather than have his actors memorizse a script, Coppola utiliszed an improvisational technique in his directing that gives the film a sort of theatrical unreality. In fact, there are entire scenes where the film borrows dialogue from a play: the “go back to the cluuuub” scene that is making the rounds on TikTok for its over-the-top acting is an interpolation of the dialogue from George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. Coppola’s fascination with theatreer and theatrics is nothing new, either—he previously experimented with incorporating theatrical elements into his films in both Hammett and One from the Heart. In Megalopolis, however, the film’s theatrical acting and dialogue are seamless and blend in well with the film’s use of slapstick, low-brow humour, and burlesque.
A film that takes the risks that Megalopolis does is bound to occasionally fall short of the mark. What holds Megalopolis back from being Coppola’s best might be the over-saturation of ideas. With a running time of just over two hours, it is not possible for Coppola to squeeze every idea he has into the film, which is exactly what he tried to do. Entire plot points are introduced only to be left unaddressed—a satellite, for example, crashes into New Rome and is never once mentioned again. Such over-saturation becomes obvious during the final 30 minutes, where it initially seems like the film is building towards some kind of populist revolt, only for the movie to abruptly end. At other times, the constraints of self-financing a film of this size are clear —there is one scene where Coppola forgoes an establishing shot in favour of stock footage from a Puerto Rican Day Parade. Suffice to say, Megalopolis is an oxymoron. It is a movie about the future that begins by looking backwards, taking the audience on a tour of human achievement in the hopes that this will to create will endure far beyond Coppola’s life. It is nothing short of life-affirming. Art rarely crosses into this territory, but when it does it is minds like Cesar Catalina and Francis Ford Coppola that take us there.