‘Megalopolis’: Francis Ford Coppola’s Massive and Maniacal Imagining of America as a Modern Rome

Alci Rengifo

Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” is one of those cases you can’t quite approach as just a film. It is more of an object, fueled by the Coppola’s particular obsessions, to the point where it is all a strange panorama of statements. Coppola has never aimed low since “The Godfather” made him one of the most famous of American filmmakers to emerge out of the 1970s. His failures have become as legendary as his triumphs. This massive, visionary, meandering and farcical passion project somehow encompasses some of what has worked for Coppola and a lot of what hasn’t. What you can not accuse it of is lacking boldness. Even the material that really doesn’t land is impressive in that Coppola shot it without constraints. He has spent decades planning, rewriting and imagining this story, the result being wildly, daringly bad.

Where to begin? The setting is the City of New Rome, which is an amalgam of America’s great cities representing how the U.S. is a modern Roman Empire. Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) is a brilliant architect obsessed with designing a new utopia, using a potent energy substance (or something) of his creation. His great rival is the city’s mayor, Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who would like the old, corrupt and shaky, but efficient, system to stay in place, accusing Cesar of being a deranged dreamer. Cesar’s uncle is the multi-billionaire Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight), whose son Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf) is depraved and power-hungry. The situation gets complicated when Cesar falls for Cicero’s rebellious daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), after she arrives at his office demanding to become his pupil. Crassus then marries a TV reporter who was until now, Cesar’s lover, Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza). There is also an old Soviet satellite about to break apart and crash into the earth.

Some filmmakers of past glories are beginning to invest their own cash into the projects that studios wouldn’t let them do otherwise. “Megalopolis” joins Kevin Costner’s “Horizon: An American Saga” as a curious, grandiose misfire still fueled by genuine passion. Coppola has always swung big, at times achieving stunning results like “Apocalypse Now.” Then there are the follies like “One from the Heart,” that visually impressive yet flat romance that nearly sunk his company, American Zoetrope. “Megalopolis” may just surpass it in infamy. Describing its very structure is a feat. Coppola is mixing the spirit of a 1950s Roman epic such as “Quo Vadis” with soap opera, attempts at satire, political commentary, mystical rambling and moments that feel taken from Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead.” Reports from the set claim the director would disappear to smoke a lot of marijuana during the shoot, and much of the movie does feel like an 85-year-old’s smoked out ideas being splattered on a wall. 

You almost need to simply describe what has been witnessed, beginning with Laurence Fishburne providing Biblical narration as Cesar’s driver, Fundi Romaine. Coppola, like Gore Vidal, is right in comparing American power to the Romans, yet the idea falls apart because he also has a million other odd ones to cram the frame. Opening scenes have satirical promise with elites going to raves dressed in ancient attire mixed with high fashion. Later, there is a sequence featuring an indoor gladiator colosseum, complete with chariot racing and a rather sly wink at professional wrestling. If this were a better movie, the shot of Aubrey Plaza downing grapes like a modern Messalina would be near-iconic. Another memorable sequence finds Cesar being driven around the broken down corners of the city in darkness and rain, as vast statues move and crumble like a decaying civilization. These are further imaginative moments begging for a better epic. When the Soviet satellite crumbles and its pieces fall like asteroids over New Rome, it is a striking moment that is too brief and leads to nothing significant in the plot. Mihai Malaimare Jr.’s cinematography is awash in gold hues, and the music by Osvaldo Golijov recalls the sword and sandal scores of Miklós Rózsa.

The rest of “Megalopolis” inspires awe in its derailment combined with Coppola’s old fire striving to break through. The cocktail of imbalanced content is almost breathtaking. Cesar seems to have the power to stop time based on the fact that he is a genius. Aubrey Plaza schemes to steal old Crassus’ wealth and power, absurdly firing away her scheme while enticing greedy Clodio to go down on her. Long, oh so long, conversations turn into parlor philosophy with the dialogue quoting Petrarch and Sappho, names the audience would do well to learn about but not through this. Nathalie Emmanuel randomly quotes entire sections of Marcus Aurelius during a lunch and Cesar makes big speeches to the press while throwing around some Shakespeare. Coppola, who built such dread and subtle power in “The Conversation” and “Godfather” films, writes the dialogue like a condescending college kid eager to name drop in order to prove their point. Even worse, the acting falls flat, as if the cast is unaware of what tone or choices to find. Aubrey Plaza moans and cackles as if she were in a bad porn while Adam Driver rarely finds any mood other than a dead serious, I am a tortured genius stare. Only Shia LaBeouf seems to find the right, manic approach as a cocky little monster who later decides to run for office as a fictional Trump clone. Coppola even, literally, evokes Mussolini’s hanging. Yes, you almost need to go see this film to believe it.

Coppola comes from the “New Hollywood” generation that felt the absolute freedom to experiment and push cinema to new places in the wake of the counterculture. At times, you sense that feistiness when the film goes for visual flair. Some scenes are split into three screens. Depending on where the film is playing, lucky audiences might get the chance to experience the moment when the house lights come back on and a “live” press conference takes place, featuring Cesar speaking on the screen and an actor playing a reporter stepping out in front of the screen to interact. Coppola can still be commended for trying such flourishes in a time where big budget films attempt so little. “Megalopolis” gets so nuts with its shots of Adam Driver making laughably grand statements while gazing at the city, or unexplained uses of CGI when he appears to visit the ghost-corpse of his dead wife, that you find yourself realizing there is bad, and then there is memorably bad that verges on cult worthiness.

Eventually, the real Achilles’ heel of “Megalopolis” is that beyond its mountain of muddle, we are constantly left wondering what it is really all about. Curiously enough, if Coppola wants to make a comment on America as Rome, he never goes far with the idea. What is New Rome’s foreign policy? Has it conquered even more land and other nations? Who runs the place? Should we even strive to be a global colossus with everyone else under our boot? One senses a lot of reckless improvisation, and, indeed, many reports from the set claimed Coppola rewrote and changed the story as he went along. Adam Driver’s visionary seems to symbolize the creator or artist that can guide civilization to utopia, which here is just a CGI city with floating pods. Utopia apparently means floating down a CGI river to get somewhere quicker. The rest of the premise remains frustrating and vague, even more so when coupled with moments such as a killer with a bow and arrow snarling, “You Wall Street bitch.” It is no surprise the talent involved, because they no doubt jumped at the chance to work with Coppola. Alas, like the ancient Roman emperors, the director has become a visionary overtaken by his desires to the point where they drown in silly excess.

“Megalopolis” releases Sept. 27 in theaters nationwide.