Megalopolis - Andreas' Version
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
We usually don’t double down on reviews of new films here on Films Fatale, but Francis Ford Coppola’s latest film, the highly anticipated Megalopolis, is the kind of project that may warrant the two reviews that Andreas Babiolakis and Dilan Fernando have written, just because of the insanely polarizing nature of the film. You can find Dilan Fernando’s review here.
This review will certainly contain spoilers for Megalopolis. Reader discretion is strongly advised.
A live streamed interview with a New York Film Festival moderator took place before the one-off pre-screening of Francis Ford Coppola’s latest film, Megalopolis, commenced in sixty five cinemas across North America this past Monday. On stage with the moderator were Coppola, and New York Film Festival panelists Robert De Niro and Spike Lee (both of whom I adore, but have very little to do with Megalopolis; De Niro read for a part in the film thirty years ago, and Lee showed the film to his class at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts). The supposed Q&A was chaotic. Coppola would go off on entertaining — yet unrelated — tangents for an eternity; De Niro looked like he was wondering why he was even here half the time; Lee would occasionally jump in with his own asides that would only derail the conversations furthermore. Yet, despite how insane this Q&A was (we learned nothing about Megalopolis, and the moderator even brought up how they were running out of time and should talk about Megalopolis at least three times), the entire audience had a blast and were in stitches laughing. We got nothing substantial out of this bonus, and yet we loved every second of it because of the calamity and electricity of it all. Somehow, this wound up being the perfect precursor to watching Megalopolis: I learned nothing about the film during the preliminary interview, and I almost feel like I learned nothing about the film having watched the damn thing.
Well, there was one moment when politics came into the picture. Coppola called himself prescient with films like The Conversation predating the invasion of privacy we now presently face (also his version of Dracula, to be fair, did set off a new wave of vampire pictures, and I’m sure we can keep thinking of examples that only prove his point). In relation to Megalopolis, he predicted that America would have its own emperor in a few months, alluding to the possibility that Donald Trump may be re-elected and that Project 2025 would commence. De Niro finally sees a proper opportunity to chime in and asks the New York audience “Can you imagine Donald Trump trying to make [Megalopolis]?”, insisting that we would get a corny, falsified version of the story (or that it would be impossible for Trump to finish what he starts in the first place). All three guests encouraged the viewers to go out and vote this November.
That may have been the one part of the bonus interview that helped Megalopolis. We see a New Rome (what looks like a New York-esque metropolis that is deteriorating: it is already a set of ruins that society refuses to accept as such), run by Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito). In case it wasn’t obvious by the character names (more to come shortly) and the setting, Megalopolis likens America to the Roman Empire, with the suggestion that the nation and its powers are to go down in flames. While Coppola won’t discuss this, I also think that he is commenting on Hollywood with this allegory. Megalopolis was essentially entirely funded by Coppola himself, even down to selling his wineries to get the money needed (because most studios wouldn’t touch this film with a ten foot pole). A project that has been forty years in the making, Coppola couldn’t make Megalopolis after he lost all of his money following One from the Heart in 1982. After he could afford to make the film again in the late nineties, 9/11 happened and he felt his film hit too close to home regarding the tragedy (the rebuilding of a destroyed, New Yorkian society). And so continued the domino effect of pauses on the project, from funding concerns to the pandemic and Hollywood strikes. The film was considered too risky with too high of a budget that would likely result in a loss. I think Hollywood was scared to turn the lens on itself.
At the forefront of New Rome is a dreamer named Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver): an architect who is trying to get his concept of a utopia — the titular Megalopolis — to come to fruition; the proposed city runs on a fictional, miraculous material called Megalon. We never really get a proper description of what Megalon is, where it comes from, or how it functions even within the rules and boundaries of the film. All we know is that it is a glowing, translucent, pale yellow in colour, and it can do almost anything (from make moving sidewalks so pedestrians don’t need to walk, or even heal near-fatal injuries). I suppose Megalon is a metaphor for the untapped potential of what the ambitious inventors of our world are capable of if greed and corruption didn’t slow down or halt innovation, but I still wish that the element was incorporated better than this mysterious, magical substance that just happens to do pretty much whatever Coppola wants it to do.
I’ll give you an example: in the recent body horror film, The Substance, we never truly find out how the titular ooze was invented or how it works on a fundamental level, but we learn enough (that it takes a host body and creates a youthful clone of it, as well as the various rules that the film abides by) that we believe whatever happens throughout the film. This is not the case with Megalopolis. Later on in the film, Megalopolis is slowly being built and we don’t feel like we are a part of this construction whatsoever. It kind of just begins developing, and we lose all of that magic just seeing it plop up into existence. It’s a missed opportunity to become enveloped by Coppola’s creation in this respect (at least there are other ways that he wins you over), and it only makes the flimsiness surrounding what Megalon even is much worse; not only don’t we know what it is, but we barely even see it work to a satisfying degree.
Cesar is also shown being able to stop time, but it is insinuated that this is an ability that he achieves in the confines of his mind; perhaps a symbol of how the innovators of the world can refuse to get caught up in the speed of life and properly assess what needs to be done via a sense of control of crises. The only person who is aware of his ability to “stop time” is Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel), the partying, socialite daughter of Mayor Cicero. Cesar wants nothing to do with Julia at first, until she confesses that she caught him stopping time. From that point on, they’re two dreamers who strive for Megalopolis to be completed, while New Rome burns. Cesar’s opposition is his cousin, Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf) who wants his family’s empire in New Rome to continue as is, despite all the homelessness, danger, and chaos that is tearing the nation apart. Clodio is clearly meant to be a Trumpian symbol, even down to the point of standing on a swastika podium. Clodio is in cahoots with Cesar’s uncle, Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight), who owns the local bank, as well as television personality and attention seeker Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza); with the media and the economy at his fingertips, Clodio will destroy Cesar to be in power.
While I respect all of the points Coppola is making and the ambition used to make them (more on that shortly), Megalopolis, respectfully, is fucking insane.
Not many films have made me feel as conflicted as Megalopolis.
If you are reading that Megalopolis is one of the strangest films in recent memory, it isn’t. It’s one of the strangest films of all time. I don’t even know where to begin with how. Maybe we should start with the acting. Despite being a science fiction epic full of prestigious ideas and provenance, Megalopolis is also as silly as an Adult Swim cartoon (the kind that have pornographic, cheesy dialogue that is so on the nose that you will need to schedule a rhinoplasty afterwards). I swear I was looking at Looney Tunes characters for much of the film, as they state clunky lines with straight faces, or erupt in animated ways (like Jim Varney-esque mugging, spontaneous yelling, and other peculiar behaviours). I understand that Coppola is trying to satirize the American elite, but there are ways to go about this without feeling so foolish. If anything, this does a disservice to the actors in the film, many of whom are quite difficult to watch here. Voight is as bad as he’s ever been capable of being. Dustin Hoffman, who appears for about three minutes of the film, has never been worse (I never thought I’d say that). Even the lead, Driver, is hit or miss. At times, I think he’s quite good, and at others, Driver is resorted to the role of a confused simpleton. I don’t blame the actors who were all letting go of inhibitions to help make Megalopolis work. This feels like the result of questionable direction. If Coppola was trying to achieve Succession, Triangle of Sadness, or The Menu with these “satirical” characters, he’s way off.
The film itself kind of feels like three motion pictures at once aesthetically. Parts of the film feel like a realistic depiction of a futuristic New York, with slight alterations to the city to make the setting feel like it is of its own world (think of how Gotham City in The Dark Knight is clearly Chicago, and yet it is altered enough to feel like a fictitious city). Then there is the complete other extreme: a modernization of the fantasy and science fiction films made during the silent era (like Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon) with pastel aesthetics, surreal designs, and breathtaking sets. Then, there is the in-between: a New Rome that is not quite fully of another reality, but not recognizable enough to feel typical. It’s curious as to why Megalopolis flip-flops in this way. I initially thought the fully-fantastical portions were in the minds of the dreamers (Cesar and Julia), until non-dreamers (like the Mayor) are found within these realms, so that’s impossible. You could argue that these sequences are still shown from the mindsets of the dreamers, but it doesn’t work when the non-dreamers interact with props and properties of these imaginative experiences. I also view this spectrum of setting, tone, and artistry as the film encouraging itself to break out of convention, which feels like a more plausible answer to this kookiness.
At times, the film breaks out into pure, cinematic, psychedelic hallucinations, and I don’t think it’s possible to not be blown away by these moments. It is during these sequences that I finally see eye-to-eye with what Coppola had in his mind when he refused to give up on Megalopolis for decades. These images had my jaw on the floor, especially on a massive IMAX screen. Of course, it was only a matter of seconds before something ludicrous would happen. I haven’t even gotten into the real crux of how bonkers this film gets, but believe me when I say I need to get these things off my chest. For those of you who want to be completely spoiled (please skip the rest of the review if you want to avoid blatant spoilers; you have been warned), you may not even believe me when I go through the ten craziest things about the film (in order from least weird, to most fucked up). Hell, I barely believe that they happened. I love a film that is willing to let loose and not stay within the lines, but in the case of Megalopolis, when the following happens,
10) Hoffman is reduced to a croaking toad with barely any lines or purpose.
9) Talia Shire is similarly misused, with acting and character writing that I can only compare to the mother in Tommy Wiseau’s The Room.
8) Julia is naked (yet censored) in the local newspaper, and yet neither this or her partying in the first scene are ever referenced again in the entire film, which lasts over two hours, I might add.
7) Characters get moments to narrate the film, but some characters have literally one line and they never “narrate” the film again.
6) America’s Got Talent winner, Grace VanderWaal, has a musical number where she multiplies into a wall of about twenty Graces VanderWaal, ukuleles and all, all while wearing a dress that renders half of her body invisible.
5) Grace VanderWaal can’t stop there before going full-on Jojo Siwa with a rock sequence that happens so quickly and viciously (flames and all) that it feels like a sudden urge of diarrhea (the spicy food finally hit wrong) that thankfully passes.
4) Shia LaBeouf’s unkempt pubes make an appearance
3) The house lights of our theatre came up and a hired patron in the audience held a microphone and “asked” Cesar on screen a question, to which Cesar responds, before the film proceeds and the lights go back down. This has been the way Megalopolis has been shown at film festivals and during our one-off preview night last Monday. This would have actually been a great, fourth-wall-breaking idea if it wasn’t so conditional on the participant. Ours had cold feet and rushed through his dialogue to the point that we could barely make sense of what he said, and then there was an awkward pause before Cesar responds.
2) Cesar gets shot in the face and turns into a Jesus-like figure with a half glowing skull (ironically, think of Esposito in Breaking Bad) made up of Megalon… He somehow doesn’t die from being shot in the head point blank.
1) Hamilton pretends to have an erection, which is actually a tiny bow and arrow he is hiding under the blankets of his apparent death bed, and he proceeds to shoot Wow Platinum in the chest, and Clodio in the ass twice (and he couldn’t be slower in killing them).
… perhaps some cohesion and normalcy would have been nice.
When it works, Megalopolis is every bit worth the wait.
I don’t want to sound solely negative about Megalopolis, because in the way that there is a list of questionable decisions, there are just as many choices that do work. The final act is heavily comprised of a triptych split screen effect that either shows three sequences at once or the same sequence appear to pop-out of the screen via trickery (this feels like a reference to Abel Gance’s Napoléon in 1927, as well as that online GIF trend from the early 2010s that made animations look 3-D: a sign that Coppola has a great sense of how the visual medium has succeeded as a form of illusions from the start until now). The majority of the hallucinations are exemplary, but my favourite is when Cesar is in a drunken haze and resembles a Hindu God with many arms (like Shiva). To go back to the scene where Cesar is shot, this is perhaps the strongest scene of the film (not what transpires afterwards with the Megalon healing solution, mind you). Cesar waiting in the car and signing a seemingly innocent child’s book felt just like the pivotal moment in The Godfather where Don Vito Corleone was purchasing oranges. It was the one part of Megalopolis that felt like Coppola was in complete control, and the dread I sensed was exhilarating; it was clear that the auteur could play by the rules if he really wanted to.
The point of Megalopolis is that Francis Ford Coppola doesn’t want to abide by the rule book of cinema. He never did. The Godfather was a New Hollywood, game-changing epic that came out of the mind of a student of the underground. Apocalypse Now was meant to be Coppola’s answer to action cinema (I’m glad it was way off, because the end result is far better). He only made some conventional films like the family film Jack or the rom-com Peggy Sue Got Married to try and make back the money he lost back in the eighties (even The Godfather Part III was a part of this strategy), but otherwise Coppola has always marched to the beat of his own drum. Megalopolis is the strongest evidence of this. If you want to see a film made by someone who isn’t holding himself back by any capacity, this is the film to watch. It is so off the rails, you may believe that rails never existed. You will gasp out of amazement. You will laugh over serious moments. You’ll feel sick periodically. You may feel like you are on drugs for most of the film. It’s a film that is almost impossible to describe because words won’t do the final result any justice. For better or for worse, there’s no film like Megalopolis out there.
So, the final thing is to decide upon a numerical rating. I honestly don’t even know what Megalopolis deserves. At times, this film contains some of Coppola’s greatest visions. At others, you’ll see some of Coppola’s worst direction. The entire film has a purpose, but not every sequence aligns with them. There are great ideas that feel unfinished or rushed, as if around half an hour of the film was cut and never put back in. Maybe the film was hurried out to beat the 2024 election; maybe Coppola just wanted the film done after forty years of dreaming. This film is a 5/5 and a 0/5 at any given moment. It’s like if Wiseau’s The Room met Tarsem Singh’s The Fall, or Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain (hell, why not both). Part of me feels like this is a straight up one out of five, but then I remember the parts that do work and the vision Coppola possesses. This leads me closer to a four out of five, but that is far from accurate as well because of all the things that don’t work or even feel finished. So, I have resorted to Films Fatale’s rating legend and will fall upon a solid three out of five: the suggestion that you may like this film or you may not. That sentiment hasn’t been as true for most films as it has for Megalopolis: a batshit experience that is simultaneously the best and worst that 2024 cinema has to offer, but a freeing experience where Coppola has opened Pandora’s box.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.