Ignore the star rating at the top of this review. It's there because it has to be, and it's high enough to indicate that you should see "Megalopolis," Francis Ford Coppola's four-decade passion project finally brought to the screen in all its insane splendor. That doesn't mean you'll like this movie. I wouldn't argue that strongly with someone who hated or loved it. And I truly think my rating could be higher or lower on the next watch. There's too much to take in on first viewing, especially in the throes of exhaustion. The truth is that I'm not sure a traditional review of this cinematic insanity can possibly convey what it's like to watch it, an experience that sometimes feels like wandering through the dreams of one of the most important filmmakers of all time.
"Megalopolis" is a film drenched in its science fiction and classical influences, captured with insane filmmaking choices that often place shallow performances against a backdrop of deep cinematic flourish. It is alternately baffling and breathtaking, a film with a relatively traditional story when one steps back to consider its entire arc. But this isn't a film about storytelling as much as it is about the wonder of Coppola's wild vision. It's very clearly a deeply personal project, and somehow, the timing feels right for it even this long after its inception. Societies rise and fall, and only the dreamers and visionaries matter. It's almost comforting to think that art will survive after our modern Romes burn.
Here's where the plot usually kicks into a review. Bear with me. "Megalopolis" is set in New Rome, which looks much like New York City, and contains similar political and personal struggles. Adam Driver plays Cesar Catalina, an architect who can Neo-like stop time and works with a magical material called Megalon. Yes, the scenes in which Cesar literally uses a lens to look around his city from high above it are supposed to remind you of a director placing elements on a set. At least, I think so. Everything in this movie is open to interpretation, and I think some elements may even defy it.
Back to Cesar, who has been battling with the mayor of New Rome, Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito). The theme of how old systems respond to new visions weaves through "Megalopolis" as Cicero and Catalina battle for control of the city, which gets more complicated when Cesar falls for the mayor's daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), much to the dismay of Cesar's cousin Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf), who also carries a torch for Julia. His father, Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight), is the city's multi-billionaire power broker, and the old man becomes involved with Cesar's mistress at the beginning of the film, a TV reporter named, seriously, Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza). Those are the key six players, but Laurence Fishburne, Jason Schwartzman, Kathryn Hunter, Grace VanderWaal, and the legendary Talia Shire also appear.
"Megalopolis" is an explosion of ideas about societal structures and how they often fail humanity due to their lack of vision. It not only recalls an actual Roman coup attempt in 63 BCE (which had players named Cataline, Cicero, and Caesar), but Driver's first big scene consists of quoting Hamlet at length. The literary and historical references fly like Marvel Easter eggs from this point, including Siddhartha, Marcus Aurelius, Sappho, the list goes on. Coppola builds a foundation of classical philosophy and dramatic storytelling in his betrayals and political machinations and then attempts to push it all into a vision of the future. Cesar is described as "A man of the future so obsessed by the past." That's the movie. One that weaves Hamlet into a tale of an impossible substance that can shift reality. It's Julius Caesar, told by someone who wanted to make his own "Metropolis."
Clearly, that's an enticing vision, but some people will walk out of this film enraged by its inconsistencies. It is foundationally unsound at times, feeling almost like something went wrong in the edit or Coppola didn't shoot the scenes he needed to connect his ideas. He'll start a thread like a satellite crashing to Earth and then do basically nothing with it. The end seems to build to a large-scale riot, which is even mentioned, and then nah. Yet, many of the biggest swings here are breathtaking; a shot where Cesar drives through the streets of New Rome and statues like the Scales of Justice slump over from exhaustion is stunning, a visual representation of a city in its final days. Some sequences are practically incomprehensible, at least on first watch, or go on for significantly too long—the first real drag is a centerpiece Colosseum-inspired wedding, where one realizes Coppola may have lost the narrative thread in favor of the cinematic excess.
It's also clear that this explosion of ideas left some of Coppola's actors struggling to find something to hold onto. The older performers manage well enough with Driver, Esposito, and Voight figuring it out, but the younger ones sometimes seem adrift, unsure if they're playing archetypes or real human beings. There have been several reports that Coppola was improvising new ideas on set, shifting meaning and character in a way that had to be impossible for his cast. At times, it's easy to tell.
When it works, it's a feature, not a bug. There are sections of "Megalopolis" that feel like they're exploding, especially as the IMAX screen splits in three and each third has something rivetingly shot by the remarkable Mihai Mălaimare Jr. (who not only lensed FFC's "Youth Without Youth" but "The Master," among others). I truly wondered at points if characters were about to break into song; it feels that consistently broken from reality, expressing itself in ways that traditional character and dialogue cannot.
Coppola's improvisational approach feels most detrimental in the final half-hour, which is when I realized I legitimately didn't really care about how it was going to end. It's not that kind of film. I'm not even sure Coppola expects you to traditionally care about the fate of Cesar and Julia as much as to think about how we tell these stories of the future. "Utopias turn into dystopias," says one character in "Megalopolis," and it struck me as a line that could have worked in the tumult of Coppola's prime in post-Vietnam America as much as it does today. Shakespeare's time, too. Even 63 BCE. And I think the cyclical nature of human existence is ultimately one of Coppola's defining themes. As utopias turn into dystopias over and over again throughout history, it's the visionaries that will matter. The visionaries like Francis Ford Coppola.
This review was filed from the Toronto International Film Festival. It opens on September 27th.
