An architect uses a powerful building material to create a Utopian city in Megalopolis. Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) is the head of the design authority in the city of New Rome, who won a Nobel Prize for developing the infinitely malleable and miraculously strong building material megalon, which he has been using to reshape sections of New Rome into a Utopia named Megalopolis. This results in Cesar being in a bitter rivalry with New Rome’s Mayor Frank Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), exacerbated when his daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) begins working and falls in love with Cesar.
Megalopolis Synopsis
Megalopolis is the passion project from writer and director Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, The Conversation), which he has been developing since 1982. Narrated by Laurence Fishburne as chauffeur Fundi Romaine, Megalopolis stars Adam Driver as Cesar Catilina, a highly ambitious architect who can manipulate time and use his powerful building material megalon to create a new Utopia. This has resulted in Cesar creating many enemies for himself, including Mayor Cicero, who was once the prosecuting attorney for the murder of Cesar’s wife Sunny (Haley Sims). Cesar also faces the wrath of his spiteful cousin Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf) and former mistress Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), the latter of whom marries Cesar’s bank CEO uncle Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight).
My Thoughts on Megalopolis
Where do I begin on Megalopolis? After the film had been in development Hell for over four decades, Francis Ford Coppola sold a portion of his California winery to self-finance the film’s $120 million budget. On top of that, the film makes a lot of bad press involving Coppola’s filmmaking methods, allegations of on-set sexual harassment, and calling the film an anti-woke production, due to his casting of “cancelled actors,” such as Shia LaBeouf and Jon Voight. I still went into Megalopolis winning to give the film a fair shake, but within minutes I couldn’t view Megalopolis as anything other than a pretentious mess.
It all begins with the narration by Laurence Fishburne as Fundi Romaine, where the American republic is described as not being that different from old Rome. Much of the plot of Megalopolis features parallels with the fall of the Roman Empire. This includes naming characters after Roman figures and a lengthy Colosseum wedding scene in the film’s first half. The pretentiousness comes from how Cesar Catilina is depicted as some sort of messiah promising to build a better world. In a roundabout way, Megalopolis is like Francis Ford Coppola’s Southland Tales, but not in a good way.
It is quite coincidental that Adam Driver was cast as the lead of Megalopolis, as he previously was cast in another passion project, that being Terry Gilliam‘s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Of the film’s ensemble, Nathalie Emmanuel (Game of Thrones) probably ends up having the least cringe-inducing moments of the film. The same can’t be said about Shia LaBeouf as Clodio Pulcher, who along with Aubrey Plaza’s Wow Platinum, arguably becomes a bigger antognistic character than Giancarlo Esposito’s Mayor Cicero. Then there’s Dustin Hoffman as Nush ‘The Fixer’ Berman, whom I still don’t have a real idea what his purpose in the film is.
It’s quite difficult for me to describe what exactly it is about Megalopolis that rubbed me the wrong way. Is it because the world of the film seems too artificial and gives an uncanny valley feeling? Is it because there is a needless fourth-wall-breaking moment, presumably exclusive only to festival screenings, where an actor enters the cinema and interacts with Adam Driver’s character on screen? Or was I just refusing to believe the hyperbole that the film is a masterpiece solely because it was directed by Francis Ford Coppola, even though it has been decades since he made a noteworthy feature?
In some ways, Megalopolis is a film that is immune to criticism. Many people will go into Megalopolis expecting to either love or hate it and will probably be validated in either direction. I would almost recommend checking the film out just to see how much of a disaster the film is, or is not. All I know is that Megalopolis ended up taking up 2h18m that I can never get back and I am left quite spiteful because of it.
