It is well known that Megalopolis has been Francis Ford Coppola’s passion project for the majority of his storied filmmaking career, but it’s such a weird (and historically amorphous) creation that it was impossible for him to get it funded. It is also well known, at least in film circles, that he spent much of the film’s production time getting barbecued on cannabis in his trailer and updating the script regularly as a result.
And you know what? That’s what he gets to do if he so pleases. Not only do The Godfather and The Conversation earn you a Forever Pass™️, but when you self-finance your film, you get to do whatever the hell you want. And what did Coppola want? Apparently to make the biggest, gaudiest, messiest epic in modern film history. Megalopolis is nigh impossible to talk about in a critical capacity since so much of what it is exists in the story surrounding the movie rather than in the movie itself. But if his goal was to make something that is equally personal and indecipherable, then goddamnit mission ACCOMPLISHED.
I can’t tell you much about the film in a thematic sense, mostly because I’d need to see it at least three more times to even begin decoding it, but I can tell you this: it’s incredible. I’ll take a sloppily executed, unfuckwithed passion project over something crowd tested within an inch of its creative life any day of the week. And really, if Megalopolis was any less messy, it wouldn’t be any good at all. And frankly, no other filmmaker on the planet could’ve pulled this off to such a fantastically entertaining degree.
How to describe Megalopolis?
The elevator pitch is this: The downfall of Rome, but now.
The full pitch is this: what if there’s this super rich architect who wants to implement usage of an advanced metal that could only be described as magical in order to build a utopia based on the free exchange of ideas, but he gets into a power struggle against the mayor and a handful of opposing political factions, some of whom are his relatives, and then he falls in love with the mayor’s daughter, and also he can sorta stop time in the same way Zack Morris can stop time, and there’s no consensus about how humanity can move forward, mainly because there’s a fundamental disagreement between the powers that be on whether those in power should be focusing on the present or the future? Also, what if it starred everybody ever, and they’re all fantastic?
You can look up the cast on your own. There are simply too many big names to give individual praise to, but I’ll devote a few words to Nathalie Emmanuel, who steals the whole thing. Hers is easily the most human character amidst a roster of cartoons, which is certainly by design, and it seems that her humanity is the secret anchor that keeps all these larger-than-life men firmly rooted on earth, no matter how high their lofty ambitions or how hard the chains of avarice pull them otherwise.
Even as I remain mostly perplexed by the film, I can still confidently state that it’s a remarkable piece of work that I’d happily categorize as “good.” This is foremost due to the fact that I’m a sucker for movies where a filmmaker has the freedom and inclination to say yes to any creative impulse they might have, no matter how ridiculous or seemingly insignificant. The promise of such freedom is always enough to get me through the door. What kept me in the theater is the fact that Megalopolis, for all its heavy ideas and insane conceptual musings and dangling plot threads (of which there are countless), it’s one of few narrative features that reaches the sublime heights of “pure cinema.” It seems anathema to film criticism to say “just let it wash over you,” but that’s the way to take this in, at least for your initial viewing. Megalopolis deserves the IMAX treatment, even if just to say you were there.
Apologies for the truncated review, but no words can really put the scope of this beautiful mess into perspective. It’s Synechdoche, New York by way of Caligula. It’s The Fountainhead by way of Brazil. It’s a metric fuckton of movie, and love it or hate it, it’s not to be missed. I think I might have to pull a Coppola and get absolutely torched before my second viewing. Maybe that will open it up further. Or maybe it’ll just make me chuckle even harder that Dustin Hoffman spends the whole movie dressed like Darkwing Duck.
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Written by Francis Ford Coppola
Starring Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, and everyone else
Rated R, 138 minutes