Megalopolis – Review

Cert – 15, Run-time – 2 hours 18 minutes, Director – Francis Ford Coppola

Architect Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) dreams of creating a utopia within the divided city of New Rome, however those battling for control of the city fight against his attempts.

Francis Ford Coppola has wanted to make his passion project Megalopolis for years. Whether the technology wasn’t ready or no studio would fund it it took the writer-director-co-producer four decades to eventually fund the project with $120 million of his own money. A film seemingly intended to show a mirror to a divided America with an air of hope for where it could go we follow architect Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) as he attempts to build a city he calls Megalopolis within the city of New Rome; the costumes and architecture of ancient Rome fastened to the structure and bustle of New York City.

However, those in control of New Rome, and those wishing to seize it, take against Cesar’s plans, seeing it as a threat to them and their potential empire. This primarily comes from city mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) who takes against his daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), working for, and eventually forming a relationship with Cesar. However, issues also come from family such as brattish cousin Clodio (Shia LaBeouf), TV presenter and financially-driven mistress Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza) and the wealth of bank-owner uncle Hamilton Crassus (Jon Voight); not to mention the various other faces and names which crop up throughout. Overall, Megalopolis feels as if it contains every idea and character Coppola has thought of over the last 40+ years. Cramming them all in with the aim of keeping things under 2-and-a-half hours and therefore cutting the narrative to ribbons.

How much the project has changed over time I don’t know. Certain lines of dialogue feel outdated and as if they’ve not been changed at all, whereas certain scenes feel like someone trying to jab at what they see as the current state of America in a completely unsubtle way. The narrative bounces around between various characters in baffling manner as developments twist and turn with no proper sense of stable direction. One minute Cesar is playing with the idea of stopping time, an element which is constantly brought up and yet nothing appears to be done with beyond the opening scene, the next he’s facing financial ruin yet continues building his utopia from a multi-purpose material of his own creation – to the anger of those who once lived in the area he destroyed to make way for Megalopolis.

The sets and performances in the opening stages have a theatrical style to match the sub-title’s promise that we’re going to see ‘a fable’. I thought for a good while that what I was seeing was fine, but it feels better-suited to the stage. As more and more locations are brought into play Coppola’s cinematic vision for this film is clear, but it simply adds to the unsettled state of the film. The clash of inspirations for the setting are evident in an extended sequence set in Madison Square Garden, which has been converted into a coliseum for all kinds of strange ceremonies and activities, with one key detail having a good deal of time spent on it and only just finding its slight effect on the plot late in the day.

We see Driver briefly attend a family wedding celebration before wandering off in a drug-fuelled state, half mucking around with time while we see various acts performing in the arena. At no point could I properly understand what the film was wanting to depict at this point, or a good deal of moments afterwards. Megalopolis feels as if a number of its themes and ideas need more time and development, some more context. Yet, where it chooses to explain itself are in the basic moments where the audience is able to interpret and understand what’s happening without the help of a character telling us in the moment just in case nobody got it.

There are good moments within Megalopolis, but they’re often brief and just as you escape into them they’re over and another slice of confusion arrives. The focus wants to be on Driver and yet with so many people wanting power there’s an ensemble cast which largely features characters with more screen-time than their detail should allow – Dustin Hoffman and Jason Schwartzman effectively have cameo roles with nothing to do at all, even Jon Voight’s key role, at the end of the day, provides little for him to do despite what feels like so much screen-time.

A number of characters, including Driver and his city on occasion as the film shifts back to focusing on a power struggle rather than responses to his actions; where the fable-like quality is most evident and likable as a modern myth briefly plays out, are simply lost amongst the clutter of the narrative at hand. One that feels messy with ideas and faces so that things rarely settle into one core theme. It feels as if over 40 years Coppola has simply added and squeezed together rather than properly refined, meaning that his passion project, despite having some interesting concepts within its depiction of insecurity amongst power struggle and control, simply feels messy and disorganised, much as New Rome is made to seem.

Overstuffed with ideas and characters Megalopolis fails to stick to its best themes and instead feels like an unfocused clutter of 40-years of ideas, some of which haven’t been tweaked or changed since they were first thought of.