From my understanding, Francis Ford Coppolla has been trying to get his sci-fi epic Megalopolis made for quite some time. And now it’s done, and…it doesn’t seem to be something people are liking very much. I had a quiet weekend where I knew I’d need time away from home when I needed a break from grading essays, and quite frankly, I felt like I wanted to see what happens when the man who directed one of the contenders for greatest movie of all time makes something that sounds like it could be a misguided bomb. If anything, I can always check out The Wild Robot later.
Let me put it this way: when I got to the local multiplex, I was one of six people in the screening room for this movie when it started. When it was over, I was one of three people still there.
In an alternate universe where the Roman Empire didn’t fall and the United States also exists–I think, the movie doesn’t quite explain–New York City is now New Rome, and Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) is a brilliant architect who can start and stop time. That doesn’t really do much over the course of the movie, but that describes most of the movie anyway. Moments like Catalina’s stopping and starting of time don’t seem to have any significance aside from a symbollic one, and this isn’t a subtle movie. Regardless, Catalina has invented a new substance, Megalon, that he plans to use to build his Megalopolis, a utopian city in the middle of New Rome designed for everyone’s use. He has a strong backer in his uncle Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight), bank president and the richest man in the city. However, other individuals all want to stop him.
Among those are the mayor, Francis Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) , who as the city’s DA had once prosecuted Catalina for the murder of his wife, charges Catalina beat. There’s also Catina’s former mistress, TV financial reporter/talk show host Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), upset over Catalina’s spurning of her, and Crassus’s grotesque grandson Clodio (Shia LeBeouf), who seems to be carrying on an affair with all three of his sisters at the same time while being jealous of his more successful cousin. But then someone shows up in Catalina’s corner in the form of the mayor’s party girl daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), someone who can see he can stop time, and who has the sort of knowledge and philosophy that Catalina can value when he isn’t drowning his sorrows with drugs and alcohol. Can Catalina build the city he wants, one that will do more than provide basic needs for the people but be a lasting monument to human achievement?
Let me start off by saying what I liked about this movie: it is, at times, very pretty to look at. A lot of attention to detail went into the making of Megalopolis, and I can appreciate how the characters’ hair and fashion choices seems to have a strong influence from the days of the Roman Empire. Now, with that out of the way, I can move on to everything else. I can, on some level, appreciate what Coppola is trying to do here. He’s pulling out all the stops in an attempt to say something. That message is presented as the movie opens when Laurence Fishburne, as both the narrator and Catalina’s personal chauffeur and assistant, says that America has the chance to become the next Rome, a city that fell when rich men decided to let their own greed take over. However, this movie’s message isn’t that we need to beware the wealthy. No, we just need to beware evil wealthy people like Clodio and Wow. Benevolent wealthy people like Catalina and Crassus are just fine. This is a movie about rich people doing things in a “fable,” so it fits that the characters are more analogies than real people.
They act like it too. Most of the performances here feel a bit wooden, and this is a pretty stacked cast full of talented actors, so that was probably Copolla’s direction this time around. It’s a sci-fi movie, but aside from the alternate universe setting, it doesn’t really do much with the sci-fi elements, bringing them out only occasionally. And when it does try to make a statement, there’s no ambiguity here. At a certain point, Clodio decides to get involved in politics, and his manner of doing so is meant to be Trump-ish (again, it’s not a subtle movie), complete with the movie’s own take on January 6th, but LeBeouf’s performance, like most of the rest of the characters, is rather flat, lacks the sort of charisma that a Trump-like figure should have so it would make sense why people would follow him. Again, it isn’t subtle who Clodio is standing in for at those moments, but it lacks any real punch. Likewise, I felt like there were a lot of things that weren’t explained very well, like why a pop singer, also a Vestral Virgin (Grace VanderWaal), was taking large donations for her to maintain her virginity or something to say nothing of what Dustin Hoffman’s character actually did in this movie. Ideas and characters would be forgotten for long stretches, Megalon can do anything for reasons not quite known, and this movie does get a bit crazy in the last hour. Coppola, it should be noted, is 85 years old, and he dedicated this movie to his wife who died this past year. He may not have any other movies left after something this big. If this is his last feature film, I can at least compliment him on his ambitions if nothing else. As a passion project, this is something Coppola really wanted to produce. I just wish the end product felt like something worthy of a man with his cinematic stature.
Grade: D
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