Imagine the most insane and nonsensical fever dream you have ever had — whatever it is, it pales in comparison to what this psychedelic trip of a movie has in store for you.
Francis Ford Coppola’s directorial return after a 13-year hiatus, his self-funded, longtime passion project “Megalopolis” delivers a cinematic experience unlike any other. Set in New Rome, a parodic modern-day New York-esque city where avant-garde architecture meets praetorian influence, this epic fable seeks to depict the corruption of U.S. society as a parallel to the fall of the Roman Empire. Visionary architect and genius savant Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) has plans to build a utopia, but his rival, New Rome mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), vehemently repudiates them.
In Catilina, we see Coppola himself: An artist with huge dreams who will stop at nothing to see them realized. “Megalopolis” serves as both an homage to the ingenuity of man and a reproach of the numerous social issues at the root of the United States’ downfall: rampant capitalism, corrupt leadership and violent civil unrest, to name a few. Unfortunately, Coppola’s ambition is ultimately what makes the movie such a mess. It tries to explore far too many avenues and as a result, everything from the characters to the countless subplots are severely underdeveloped. Audiences get the sense that every idea he conceived for this movie over the last 40 years managed to weasel its way into it.
This mess of a thematic collage obscures the central plot and throughout the nearly two-and-a-half-hour movie, very little is done to advance it. When the story is finally picked back up again after a disaster destroys parts of New Rome, it is in a completely underwhelming and unoriginal way — a stark opposition to the otherwise overwhelming hallucinatory nature of this phantasmagorical film. Most of the scenes feel randomly compiled together until they are, at some point, contextualized — but adding more and more context only renders the plot more incoherent.
And yet despite the incomprehensibility of its plot and themes, “Megalopolis” is a weirdly straightforward movie, never achieving the depth likely intended. The metaphors are painfully on the nose and the script is littered with philosophical musings and misplaced quotes from the likes of Shakespeare and Marcus Aurelius in an attempt to be thought provoking, which only succeeds in making the dialogue feel stilted and unnatural.
Driver and Esposito both deliver solid performances despite the poorly written script but the standout is in Aubrey Plaza with her hilarious depiction of Wow Platinum, a clout-chasing TV presenter and Catilina’s mistress, which might have entirely saved the otherwise completely random and frankly insane character. Unfortunately, the tonal inconsistencies in the script create an environment in which none of the actors seem to be acting within the same genre, and some lines are painfully delivered in a way that indicates that even the actors don’t understand why they’re saying them.
Individually, each subplot has the potential to be interesting — among them, virginal pop star Vesta Sweetwater (Grace VanderWaal) becomes involved in a sex scandal, corrupting her youthful purity; a Russian satellite slowly falls toward Earth, spelling imminent disaster; and media mogul Wow Platinum attempts to manipulate her way into power among the aristocrats’ debauchery. Oh, and Catilina also has the ability to stop time — a pretentious attempt to comment on how art freezes time, which serves rather as a cruel reminder of the two-and-a-half hours I spent trying to digest this grandiose spectacle.
The overstuffed script does not do justice to any of these ideas and neither does the editing, which cuts every scene just as it’s getting started and intersperses what should be sequential scenes so far apart that you’ve completely forgotten about a subplot by the time it finally reappears.
Visually, the imagery is awe-inspiring at times, and Coppola creates an interesting atmosphere, meshing Art Deco and surrealism with classical Roman architecture. The overall look of the film, as golden-baked and gaudy as it is, deserves credit but the cheap CGI and PowerPoint-esque transition slides with agonizingly obvious attempts at cryptic inscriptions squander an otherwise enthralling visual experience.
Coppola set out to create a movie that would redefine the future of filmmaking. Needless to say, he certainly succeeded in creating something experimental on a scale that will likely never be seen again. The director clearly imbued a piece of his soul into the movie; it somehow manages to feel like a social experiment while still coming across as a deeply personal manifesto of his beliefs and philosophies—and indeed, Coppola’s compassion for humanity and criticism of society’s oppression of human fulfillment comes through throughout the film.
As a whole, the experience of “Megalopolis” is unparalleled: completely baffling, at times frustrating yet impossibly fascinating and brilliant. It is occasionally intentionally, but mostly unintentionally, hilarious. As flawed as it is, it’s ridiculously enjoyable and hard to hate: It will have you questioning exactly what it is you watched for days afterward, but therein lies the genius.
As Catilina says in the film “When you jump into the unknown, you prove you are free.” One of many nonsequiturs from a script overbrimming with them, it is one Coppola wholeheartedly embodies in the absolute chaos of this cinematic adventure. “Megalopolis” is grandiose and ridiculous and seriously suffers from an overabundance of ideas, but it should be appreciated for the impenitence of its flaws.
