There’s a grandness to Francis Ford Coppola’s 138-minute sci-fi epic ‘Megalopolis.’ It’s got big stars, big set pieces, big themes, and a self-importance that asks you to take it seriously while being tonally all over the place; probably a product of Coppola’s decision to rewrite the script with the actors’ doing improvisations during a workshop before production and improvising new changes while in the midst of shooting. This makes ‘Megalopolis’ quite incoherent and an assault to the senses. It’s loud, it’s bombastic, and for the better part of the movie, it doesn’t really say anything truly compelling.
‘Megalopolis’ is about a scientist, Cesar Catalina (Adam Driver), who has discovered a new element called Megalon that is versatile and powerful. It has given him the power to control time. He wants to build a utopia with it, but he finds himself the rival of the mayor of the metropolis called New Rome, Frankly Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito). There’s an ideological battle between the two and in the process, Cicero’s socialite daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) falls for Cesar and joins his cause. Adding an extra layer of trouble are Aubrey Plaza and Shia LeBeouf as Wow Platinum and Clodio Pulcher, respectively. Plaza’s Wow Platinum is a journalist and girlfriend of Cesar while LeBeouf’s Clodio is Cesar’s cousin and a general troublemaker.
In truth, the film really plays out as Coppola’s manifesto as he tries to establish the ideals of the artist as civilization collapses while also detailing all of the obstacles in the way towards utopia. What makes all of this feel so unreal is that there’s a heightened theatricality to the proceeding, the unnecessarily verbose dialogue that attempts at some form of weighted lyricism to try and sound lofty and profound. Surprisingly, it fits well with Driver’s and Esposito’s performance, they seem to understand the craziness around them, while Plaza and LeBeouf go to town with it and play it to its full campy potential. It’s Emmanuel, who seems to be lost in all of this, that she feels like she’s in a completely different movie from Driver and Esposito or Plaza and LeBeouf. Considering she’s a ‘Game of Thrones’ alumnus, or maybe because of it, she tried to match the film’s writing’s ambitions and, much like the film, fails to capture any sense of profundity.
The reason why is that the film tries to give importance to Cesar’s plan to build a utopia but the film never takes the time to really show us what is it in the film’s reality that needs saving. The camera is so enamored by the images to excess and greed and indulgences, always pointed towards the rich and the corrupt; or when it’s on Driver, the capable and the visionary. Coppola never takes time to really sit down and show us what the fall of civilization, as he tries to insinuate, means to the common man.
The only time he really shows us the common man is when they easily fall for Clodio’s manipulations as he turns the people against Cesar and his promise of a utopia.
The film is huge but Coppola insists on a lot of practical effects and camera effects, which lends off an old-school vibe to the film. While supposedly set in “the third millennium” and at the tail-end of the 21st Century, the production design and sensitivities are all very retro, with several characters carrying capes and cloaks; while Clodio and his sisters are always in costume. For a film that is constantly talking about the future, it seems so stuck in the past without really making any serious criticism against it.
It’s a bewildering piece. It’s long and indulgent, a whole sequence of Cesar getting high during a party that is both a chariot race and a circus performance while Clodio makes an attack at his reputation seems to go on forever and doesn’t really push the story forward. There are a lot of scenes like this that when I looked at my watch after feeling like three hours had already passed, was shocked to discover that we were just reaching the end of the first hour.
For all the fine actors and the budget and the set pieces that they put together, it feels like such a shame because I felt no emotional attachment to any character or any action that happened within the film and the film’s whole message can be picked up from two monologues that happen near the end of the movie. I’m a fan of Coppola’s older works: the first two films in the ‘The Godfather’ series and ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ and ‘Apocalypse Now.’ But ‘Megalopolis’ is way too indulgent. It has the bravado of Coppola’s older work but none of the temperament and restraint.
My Rating:
Megalopolis is now showing! Check showtimes and buy tickets here.
