The emperor has no clothes. That’s pretty much all you need to know about Francis Ford Coppola’s long-awaited Megalopolis. Thematically linked to Fritz Lang’s silent sci-fi classic Metropolis (1927), this meandering, self-important bore of a film gives ammunition to the theory that the real Coppola was murdered in 1980 and replaced by a talentless doppelganger. Of course, that can’t be true, as some of his post-Apocalypse Now (1979) output is rather good — moody monochrome gem Rumblefish (1983), for instance. But he’s never scaled the same heights as he did in the 1970s, and I still don’t understand how going from The Conversation (1974) to Jack (1996) can be considered artistic progression.
This brings us to Megalopolis. A long-gestating passion project Coppola tried and failed to make for decades, it arrives with a ton of expectations for chin-stroking cineastes. However, after 138 minutes that felt more like double that length, my chin remained conspicuously un-stroked. I was left to wonder whether Coppola had the same time-freezing power exhibited by the protagonist, Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver’s least engaging performance), given how much I felt every one of those minutes.
Cesar clashes with New Rome mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) over his vision of utopian urban planning constructed via a new substance called Megalon. Cicero’s daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) wonders if Cesar is as bad as her father and various others claim, so she decides to investigate and winds up falling in love with him. Around them is much decadence; rich and spoiled young people, old people with too much power, restlessness and discontent from the general population, and an old Soviet satellite is about to come crashing down. Cue lots of exceptionally dull and protracted set pieces, boring conspiracies, pretentious monologues, pointless literary allusions, and thuddingly obvious symbolic visions (statues coming to life and slumping wearily — it’s the fall of an empire, we get it, Francis). Portentous, pseudo-gravitas explanatory narration from Lawrence Fishburne (playing Cesar’s driver and assistant Fundie Romaine) channels his inner Morpheus from The Matrix (1999), only far less entertainingly.
In fact, whenever Fishburne, Esposito, Emmanuel, Driver, or indeed, anyone from the starry cast appears onscreen, I found myself wishing I was watching them in something good. Jon Voight, Aubrey Plaza, Talia Shire, Kathryn Hunter, Jason Schwartzman, and Dustin Hoffman are likewise wasted in the supporting cast. As for Shia LeBeouf, it may be the point to cast him as the most irritating version of himself, but you won’t love to hate him. You’ll just want to slap him repeatedly with a wet kipper as his screen presence is like fingernails down a blackboard.
This film takes the Catilinarian conspiracy and places it in a parallel universe modern New York, comparing the fall of Rome with striving-for-relevancy contemporary concerns about America’s future. However, I think the most obvious interpretation involves comparing Cesar to Coppola and Julia to his late wife Eleanor. With this metaphor in mind, Julia’s unwavering loyalty and support of all Cesar’s artistry could be seen as a touching (albeit ridiculously expensive) romantic gesture, considering the film is dedicated to Eleanor. On the other hand, I couldn’t help rolling my eyes about the way Coppola inherently casts himself in the role of misunderstood genius. This was also apparent in the film’s first trailer, which attempted to market the film by quoting bad reviews of Coppola’s established classics, essentially telling the audience this film will be considered great by future generations. Amusingly, this trailer was then withdrawn after it turned out the review quotes were inaccurate.
Some will defend the film for having interesting visual ideas, but this isn’t nearly enough to qualify Megalopolis as anything approaching an interesting artistic failure. It isn’t flawed brilliance, misunderstood, destined for greatness, or even modestly entertaining at any level. It’s just deeply boring rubbish with delusions of grandeur.
Having bet the farm, or at least a winery, on this film, Coppola splurged 120 million dollars on this celluloid dog’s dinner to be free from studio interference. Quite honestly, he’d have been better off with his booze, and so would the audience. I know people with a serious interest in film won’t be deterred from seeing this. I wish I could deter them because it adds nothing to the conversation about the artistic progression of cinema. However, I will try my luck with more casual cinemagoers: Go and see something else. Anything else. Just as I try to discourage the support (and therefore proliferation) of algorithmically dictated soulless legacy sequels and whatnot, I also wish to discourage these kinds of up-its-own-backside fits of self-indulgent cinematic flatulence.
I feel bad about Coppola because I think he’s rather swallowed his own Kool-Aid concerning disdain for the moneymen, producers, studios, and so forth. Yes, sometimes these people ruin potentially great art. But at other times — such as his experience with Robert Evans on The Godfather (1972) — they ensure great art is presented in the best possible way. Sometimes, it pays to have conflict with the money men. Sometimes, they have a point. Let’s draw a veil over this mess, and instead remember that Coppola gave us some of the greatest films ever made in the 1970s.
(Originally published at Medium.)
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Thanks Simon, I was trying to find a single review that would actually tell me what the movie was about, and they are thin on the ground - and that made me highly suspicious. The last movie I was tricked into seeing where the plot was as clear as mud was Mother, and that turned out to be bafflingly pretentious claptrap - such a dreadful try hard of a dreary dirge of a movie that I ended up laughing at the torture and only stayed to the end out of a sense of revolted curiosity.
Anyway, I was pretty much on the fence about this, and now feel quite safe in avoiding :)
I wasn’t planning to see it. I hate Adam Driver, for one thing.