The journey of Megalopolis to the screen is astonishing. So much so it almost feels impossible that it would produce a mediocre film. Yet, here we are. Francis Ford Coppola called his shot in 2020, in an interview with Bilge Ebiri, saying that if nobody wanted to produce his magnum opus, he would pay for the production himself. He put his money where his mouth was, funneling the cash from fifty years of Godfather royalties – not to mention a pretty substantial wine empire – into his latest film. Ever since that interview, Megalopolis has been anticipated by cinephiles around the world. The production was plagued by bad press, with Coppola’s behavior frequently called into question. When the film director is also the top-to-bottom boss, it’s hard to find a way to say no.
And perhaps that’s where things have gone wrong here. This may be the most earnestly produced American drama this year, so abundant in its belief in hope and love as a panacea to solve the world’s ills. What are those ills? MAGA charlatans, lack of imagination, leaders unwilling to recognize when it’s time to step down. Coppola apparently has takes on the dire state of the American political landscape, but while the imagery may conjure up the likes of Donald Trump, Megalopolis is so completely off balance that it never can stick to any one opponent for too long. The film reminds me of Orson Welles’s The Other Side of the Wind, a long unfinished final film that came together in 2018 much to everyone’s bafflement. At least Welles had the decency to be dead for thirty years when that was finally released.
The film is over two hours of Coppola’s id, a fable about where humanity has failed and what it can do to redeem itself. Adam Driver plays Cesar Catalina, an architect and chairman of the Design Authority in the city of New Rome, a futuristic place that looks exactly like midtown Manhattan. New Rome is run by the very unpopular mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), but more unofficial authority probably belongs to Hamilton Crassus (Jon Voight), a banker who is richer than God. The city’s information is controlled by TV presenter Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), an ambitious news breaker who dreams of amassing power. Wow is Cesar’s mistress, but when it becomes clear that he doesn’t take their romance seriously (he’s still grieving the death of his wife), she pursues a marriage with the much older Crassus.
Mayor Cicero’s daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), is a vapid socialite who likes to party with Clodia Pulcher (Chloe Fineman), Crassus’s hedonistic daughter. At first, Julia despises Cesar for insulting her father, but when she witnesses him stop time while performing a demolition, she becomes intrigued. Against her father’s wishes, she begins to work with the ethereal Cesar, helping him realize his dreams of creating Megalopolis, a utopian society within New Rome that will heal the violence created by society’s mass inequality. His biggest opponent is Crassus’s unstable son, Clodio (Shia LeBeouf), who wishes to pursue a political career not for any public good but to win his father’s respect. His methods strain even basic ethics, using fear to foment hatred amongst the lower classes (in case you were worried this wasn’t obvious enough, there are swastikas at his speeches).
The insight Coppola has on current events is shallow, his observations inert. The whole thing makes Alex Garland’s Civil War feel like an act of stealth subtlety. If any of these ideas were fully baked, then Megalopolis may actually be a successful movie, but one watches this and gets the sense that Coppola doesn’t have any handle on what’s going on outside of popular imagery. In interviews, Coppola has stated that he doesn’t believe in a single political dogma, and has touted the casting of Voight – a noted right wing psychopath – as proof that one should pursue working with people across ideological persuasions. I truly believe that is decent enough advice in work and life, but none of that pays dividends for Megalopolis, which has nothing significant to say, so it edits itself into incoherence in a desperate attempt at artistic style.
I think Coppola has earned his reputation as a New Hollywood master. Even if he’d only made The Godfather films, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now, that would be enough to chisel you into the Mount Rushmore of American cinema. But the proof is there: Coppola hasn’t had the enduring power of his most famous peers. Scorsese, Altman, and Spielberg, for sure, but even Friedkin, Schrader, and Lumet have all persevered better outside of the 1970’s than Coppola ever has. I want to join the fun of those who feel this is a valiant swing of expression, and if we want to give extra credit for audacity at his age, then it’d be difficult to disagree. But I don’t think a filmmaker of Coppola’s stature should be graded on a curve, and it frankly feels intellectually dishonest to claim that this film has serious artistic substance.
Adam Driver has proven a willingness to follow his directors wherever they need him to go, which is why he’s become one of the premiere actors of his generation. He’s playing a pretty impossible character here – Robert Moses written by H.G. Wells – but despite it all he actually finds the humanity here. He and Plaza are the only two performances that escape the film with their dignity intact. Everyone else is quite lost in the sauce. (Side note: I simply cannot take another performance from LeBeouf where he’s obviously just transcribing his own personal instability into the character.) Nathalie Emmanuel is also given an impossible character, but hers is one whose behaviors and motivations are dictated solely by what the script needs her to do. She’s meant to be sparky but appears completely free of agency. Emmanuel never finds the route toward anything material.
It was fun to see Dustin Hoffman in this, even if his character is a meaningless addition, a nebbish fixer for Esposito’s mayor. Seeing a Midnight Cowboy reunion between he and Voight fifty-five years later is one of the movie’s few bright spots. Perhaps the best moments of the film are the scenes where Cesar mourns his wife, which leads to a touching tribute at the end to Coppola’s own wife, Eleanor, who passed away in April. Eleanor Coppola was a great filmmaker in her own right, albeit always in her husband’s shadow. She’s probably most famous for directing the documentary Hearts of Darkness, which highlighted Francis’s blistering emotional insecurity and violent erraticism on the infamously troubled set of Apocalypse Now. One wonders what a Eleanor Coppola documentary on the making of Megalopolis might look like. Doesn’t seem like much has changed.
Written and Directed by Francis Ford Coppola