Francis Ford Coppola, director of The Godfather, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, sold his award-winning Sonoma Wineries, in a deal rumoured to be anywhere between $500 million to $1 billion, to self finance his $120 million magnum opus, his passion project, his masterpiece, over four decades in the making. Megalopolis is bold. It’s audacious. It’s a film unlike anything that has been made, and potentially, will ever be made.
It’s baffling, messy, incoherent, and wildly absurd. It’s on the borderline of genuinely terrible. And it’s incredible. It’s a true miracle that a film like Megalopolis even exists.
Megalopolis is a Roman Empire inspired fable, a story about power, greed, corruption, desire, and how all of these elements lead to the eventual fall of a city. The city in this modern reimagining of the fall of Rome is a New York-like city in ruins called… New Rome.
With New Rome already in a state of decay and disarray, the threat of more destruction becomes imminent, caused by a decommissioned nuclear satellite hurtling towards earth. As power struggles within the government tear apart any semblance left of true democracy, a visionary architect, Caesar Catalina (Adam Driver), who has a supernatural ability to stop time, takes it upon himself to begin developing a new utopia called Megalopolis.
The Roman Empire comparisons are validated by Coppola’s characters in Megalopolis, and the back-stabbing, corrupt (and of course, incestual) way they all interact with each other and the story. New Rome’s Mayor, Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) is losing his grip on the city, trying to take down Caesar’s dream of utopia by framing him with the murder of his wife. Whilst Cicero’s daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) becomes enamoured by Caesar’s relentless pursuit of his vision, and joins forces with him to hopefully bridge a gap between Caesar and Cicero.
Vying for complete control of New Rome, and the one behind the scenes really pulling the strings, is multi-billion dollar banker, Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight), who while nearing the end of his life, is trying to select the successor to his fortune. One candidate is his volatile and unhinged nephew, Clodio (Shia LaBeouf), who’s bad boy persona, and penchant for sleeping with his sisters, has his true intentions set upon also destroying Caesar, because of his own lust for Julia. And the other candidate is TV personality, Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), whose desire for wealth and fame leads to her snaking her way into Hamilton’s life.
These characters and story arcs barely scratch the surface of the absolutely wild narrative that is this modern day epic. Narrated by Laurence Fishburne, and with fleeting appearances from Dustin Hoffman, James Remar, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Chloe Fineman, Grace VanderWaal, Kathryn Hunter and more, Megalopolis is ambitiously big. Too big. Way too big.
Coppola has thrown every single idea he has ever had into this film, both narratively and creatively. And by financing the entire film himself, his complete creative control is on full display, having no studios or fellow producers to tell him whether something is a bad idea or may not work. Which at times, is frustrating to watch as the chaos of his gigantic ideas constantly clash into a messy cacophony of insanity. On the other hand, it means Coppola has honestly made a film that in the normal studio system, would never have been made, and in an age where the cry is for more original ideas and content, it’s a true miracle!
Dream-like imagery, visionary aesthetics, drug-fuelled nightmare scenes and epic scaled sets visually bring the utopia stylings of Megalopolis to life in such a vivid way. It’s almost unbelievable at times, entrancing viewers and inviting them into the insanity that is this twisted tale. The dedicated performances, especially from Driver, LaBeouf and Plaza (who all seem to understand the melodrama flying off of this script), and some hilarious, maybe unintentionally, turns from Jon Voight, who got the biggest laugh of the night with an unexpected boner joke.
However, “unintentional” seems like the key takeaway for where this film’s enjoyment really lies. It’s hard to believe that any of the multiple, muddled plot lines, excess in vision over coherence, or the simple fact that this movie by an 80-year-old man is horny as hell, was ever going to work to make any semblance of a watchable film. But, perhaps that’s the point. As corny as it is to say, Megalopolis is an artist making art, and it’s ambitiously wild. So, while the movie may not work in its entirety, it’s impossible to not be completely entranced by what was happening on that screen.
Megalopolis is an experience more so than a film. With a speaker from the audience conversing under a spotlight in a press conference scene with Adam Driver, to IMAX montages of a utopian city being built before our eyes, and wild dialogue delivered with the tone and cadence of a Tommy Wisaeu performance, this is not your average movie. But, it’s something that is still utterly fascinating, a test of patience at points, but goddamn fascinating.
Megalopolis played at this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival, and will be released in Australian cinemas August 26.
