An astonishing feat of self-indulgence that you have to tip your hat to. Francis Ford Coppola poured forty years and his winery’s fortune into crafting his magnum opus, Megalopolis. Degrading it to a star rating feels offensive and wrong, like spitting on someone’s grave. To even attempt such lands at the conclusion that it’s somehow both a 1-star film and a 5-star film, equal parts god-awful and remarkable. Coppola had to make this movie, like Scorcese had to make The Irishman, because if they were to leave this world without sharing their most personal stories, it would have all been a waste. Megalopolis is a prime example of how, when great artists near their final curtain, their expression—no matter how zealous or audacious—transcends subjectivity.
The story and setting of this film are so ambitious that it’s hard to summarize the plot into descriptives. In layman’s terms; Adam from Girls plays a modern day Julius Caesar in a dystopian Manhattan called “New Rome,” where he is a visionary architect who holds inexplicable powers to stop time by simply shouting, “Time Stop.” He holds an optimistic, innovative view of a sustainable utopic future and to achieve such he must dethrone the incumbent Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) and his regressive ways. There’s allegories thrown in there about today’s political climate, the Trump of it all, Coppola’s own ego, yadda, yadda. The surface-level messages are the least radical, least important parts of the film.
Aubrey Plaza as a horny gold digger named Wow Platinum is important, Shia LaBeouf as a cuckolded, cross-dressing, MAGA-coded provocateur is important. Jon Voight putting an arrow in his pants and calling it a boner is important. Adam Driver delivering a Shakespeare monologue for no contextual reason is important. Though the actors play it serious, the only way to view the film is through an imaginative, surrealist lens. Remove the notion of ‘impactful’ filmmaking, and enjoy the bonkers ride through the eyes of the vaudeville-esque characters. Even the casting itself (which we touched on briefly here) was a choice as radical as the Megalon. Coppola intentionally included disgraced actors—like LaBeouf, Voight, and Dustin Hoffman—as a deliberate boomer response to rebel against the MeToo-era blacklist. Another mold-breaking expression that only someone with Coppola’s pedigree can get away with.
Megalopolis uses an incredibly visual method of storytelling. The cinematography is audacious, mirroring Cesar’s grandiose ideas for a glowing and beautiful New Rome. Again, the film holds an impressive dialectic edge—being both an impressive feat of imagery and the ugliest movie in recent memory. The alarming amount of CGI used to create this semi-alternate universe can only be compared to that of a Spy Kids movie. Yet, instead of distracting, the emblematic golden aesthetics created a hypnotic, trance-like viewing experience.
Megalopolis is already a polarizing topic amongst film-goers, and rightfully so. Coppola created something so singular and idiosyncratic that is bound to miss the landing for many. There were times when even I felt like I was too dumb to understand a deeper element at play, but soon realized there is nothing to be misunderstood about it. Like a renaissance painting hanging on a gallery wall, art like this is up to your own interpretation. I expounded that this film is a 138 minute adaptation of listening to your senile grandfather blather in a dementia haze—endearing, befogging, a bit sad but ultimately entertaining. There was not a single moment of Megalopolis where I wasn’t utterly mystified, baffled, but craving to see what nonsense would come next.