After 40 years in the making, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis has finally graced the silver screen and my goodness is it something. After the divisive reviews out of Cannes, I did not know what to expect other than it being a little messy. To state that Megalopolis is a little messy is an understatement. Megalopolis is a bombastic mess of a film that will test your patience and endurance as you’re plunged into a fever dream that has been cooking for over 40 years. Yet, despite its messiness, I still respect the film, even though I can’t say it is particularly good.
We follow Cesar Catillina (Adam Driver), a Nobel prize winning architect who wants to turn the City of New Rome into a utopia for all. However, the city’s mayor, Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), and several others wish to keep the city in its regressive status quo, where the rich and powerful rule the city. This narrative is very straightforward and feels like a fable of old. However, this fable has been buried under 40 years of rewrites. These 40 years of rewrites have inserted so many ideas and themes that the film is like a bursting dam. The film attempts to tackle themes such as power, corruption, legacy, love, the future, the past and much much more. Coppola took a massive ambitious swing with Megalopolis, to which I respect him for really going outside of the box. However, this swing led to a film having little to no cohesion and narrative structure.
It was hard not to figure out what is happening in the film, but the lack of a cohesive narrative does get annoying. The film’s narrative flies off into several tangents that are either dropped entirely or feels like they are a missed opportunity. For example, in one plotline we follow Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), a reporter who wants to control the city banks by sleeping her way to the top, which was an interesting narrative that led to nothing due to its quick resolution. Or a life threatening event happens to Cesar that you think will dramatically change the film, but within 10 minutes that narrative is magically resolved. These nonsensical subplots, and many more litter the script. Thus causing there to be little to no narrative cohesion, despite the storying throwing everything it possibly can at you.
And if the narrative wasn’t overwhelming enough, the visual language of this film might throw you into a seizure. The film experiments with many styles ranging from classic fade out, to three frames on screen at once. Some of these work very well in some scenes while others are just disorienting. At least the costume and production design was one point with the intricate sets and costumes. They are the least disorienting part of the film.
What further adds to this film’s disorientation is that none of the actors were on the same page when it came to delivering their performances. Some of the actors were fully aware about how messy this film is so they went with these over the top, campy performances. These actors included Aubrey Plaza (best performance in the film by a mile), Giancarlo Esposito, Shia LaBeouf, Jason Schwartzman, and Jon Voight, and they were definitely the highlight of the film. Others, such as Nathalie Emmanuel and Dustin Hoffmam, try to play it straight, and their performances stick out like a sore thumb. Then, you have some who try to bridge between the two, like Adam Driver and Kathryn Hunter, who feel slightly lost over what to do.
Yet, despite all of these complaints, I still respect the film. We are witnessing a legend in the film industry putting his own money, $120 million to be exact, on the line to make his passion project. I respect Coppola for taking that risk because we are not going to see a film like Megalopolis, for better or for worse. This is an auteur, who has nothing left to lose, doing what he wants to do. He has my respect. And to be honest, it is a messy movie, but it was my kind of messy movie. So I can’t really give it a rating. Go see it yourself, and make up your mind of what you think of the mess that is Megalopolis.
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