Megalopolis

Francis Ford Coppola – 2024 - USA

Like gibbering sugar-crazed brats hopping in delirious rage to take their turn whacking a piñata at a backyard barbeque, mainstream critics and internet reviewers alike have gleefully donned their lynch-mob costumes to get in their jabs at Francis Ford Coppola and Megalopolis. Long before it ever screened publicly, they couldn’t contain their giddy delight in reporting that it was going to be a colossal disaster. Now that it’s in general release, the schadenfreude is snapping into high gear as headlines and thumbnails exultantly declare that the film is an indulgent mess and playing to empty theaters. “Coppola’s folly,” they scream together in orgasmic ecstasy. This is the nightmare dystopia we live in, where even though we’re drowning in absolute junk movies and shows – forgettable, assembly-line “content” meant to be little more than background noise as long as the valuable ads get their allotted time – the commentators choose as their safe target an 85-year-old auteur who used his own money to make his dream project. For this despicable crime, the veteran director of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now is to be pilloried, tarred, feathered, drawn, quartered, you name it, for the screeching glee of the bloodthirsty crowd. Doesn’t the old fool know that you’re only supposed to make superhero films, kid’s cartoons or limited TV series based on existing IPs? You’re not supposed to make something that you thought up yourself and believe in and contains a statement that you’ve longed to make. That kind of sophomoric thinking is expected from a pretentious film school student, not a show-biz professional. 

The self-described “fable” recasts New York City as New Rome, and lays on the allegory pretty thick throughout. Adam Driver is Caesar Catalina, a visionary architect and city planner who is thwarted in bringing his visions to life by the powerful Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito). The film is serious about questioning the structure and priorities of the society we live in, but it’s also joyously wacky in a Felliniesque way. It’s like The Fountainhead meets Satyricon but presented in the shameless digital artificiality of Attack of the Clones. 

Time has always been a distinct motif in Coppola’s films, going back at least to The Godfather Part II and continuing through Apocalypse Now, Rumble Fish, Peggy Sue Got Married, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Youth Without Youth. Here it takes center stage, as Catalina not only possesses the superpower of being able to stop and start time, but the main argument in the story concerns how best to use the present to invest in the future. 

I’m not sure what exactly the $120 million budget was used for because the film often has the look of a stage-bound green-screen chamber drama not unlike George Lucas’ prequel trilogy. It’s very evident because the few scenes that were clearly shot outdoors in the real world are such a strong contrast, and they feel more alive too. I was somewhat disappointed by the lack of scale regarding the catastrophe that devastates the city and makes way for Catalina’s designs, which in turn come off more like a confined, Brasilia-like futuristic planned community than the first step towards a whole new society. My only other major complaint is that Catalina, though shown as flawed, is never challenged objectively, not even by Cicero. Catalina knows his own ideas are correct, but he also has a messiah complex, which Coppola appears to buy into instead of critiquing it. It’s like if Lucas had told Anakin Skywalker’s story but ended up siding with him instead of showing the consequences of the character’s blind self-importance.

The film brings to mind Coppola’s controversial finale for Apocalypse Now, which skipped writer John Milius’ preferred epic battle scene for a more philosophical and uplifting resolution in which Captain Willard, having replaced the psychotic Kurtz as king by killing him, encourages his subjects to lay down their arms and enter a new era of peace. Widely criticized for presenting such an anticlimactic and “confusing” ending, Coppola simply believed that it was pointless to go to so much trouble to make a film if you’re not going to say something sincere in it. Standard war movie fireworks might not have even come out convincing if Coppola had gone along with it; we’ll never know. The entirety of Megalopolis is an expansion of the final few minutes of Apocalypse Now; a plea to embrace ideals and to look beyond the needs of the present for the sake of generations of come. With his brazen romanticism and philosophical nature, Coppola always risks accusations of pretentiousness, but so what? Better a smidge of pretension from a great artist than the relentless, cynical fast food-like movies that are passed off as cinema all around us. 

I’m old enough to remember Bram Stoker's Dracula being considered a horrendous failure in 1992, with Coppola accused of arrogantly trying to make a commercial hit after the horrendous failure of The Godfather Part III in 1990, (a film that made back more than twice its budget and was nominated for Oscars, incidentally). Over the years, fans have made their voices heard and Coppola’s Dracula is now considered a classic for its operatic scope and fascinating practical effects. I assume something similar will happen with Megalopolis. People unconcerned with critical consensus will happen across it with open minds and be moved by its sincerity, humor and ambition.

A failure by Coppola is overwhelmingly more interesting than a success by nearly anyone else.