In an early scene of Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis that attempts to introduce all its major players at once, Adam Driver recites the entirety of Prince Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be” soliloquy at a cacophonous press conference. It’s a classic-theatre intrusion on an aesthetic that’s already precariously imbalanced between the antique Art Deco sci-fi of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and the uncanny green screen CGI of our post-MCU future. Old-timey newspaper reporters with “PRESS” badges tucked into the ribbons of their fedoras meet Driver’s recitation of Shakespeare with adoring, rapt attention, but the rest of the main cast is visibly unsure how to play the scene. A wide range of talented, sought-after actors (i.e., Aubrey Plaza, Giancarlo Esposito), cancelled has-beens (i.e., Dustin Hoffman, Shia LeBouef), and unproven upstarts who don’t yet have full control of their craft (i.e., Chloe Fineman, Nathalie Emmanuel) circle around Driver, individually calibrating their plans of attack. Every single person in the scene has a different idea of what kind of movie they’re in, so that the world’s most frequently quoted soliloquy is the only anchor that provides the bizarre exchange any sense of structure. Megalopolis appreciators will tell you that this teetering, unfocused tone is the sign of a genius director at work, exploring new cinematic territory by disregarding minor concerns like coherence or purpose. In my eyes, it’s a sign that the film isn’t directed at all; it’s a gathering of immense resources and disparate ideas into a single frame to accomplish nothing in particular, just an awkward dissonance. Coppola may have had a clear picture of Megalopolis envisioned in his mind, but he did a piss-poor job of communicating that vision to his collaborators and his audience.
This is a sprawling, extravagantly expensive movie with exactly two ideas. The first is that America is currently experiencing its own Fall of Rome, an idea that was popular among academics and media types about two decades ago. The second is that Francis Ford Coppola is an underappreciated genius, an idea that was popular among academics and media types about four decades ago. The America-in-decline angle of the story is at least well suited to the past-his-own-prime auteur’s current mindset as a bitter old man. It not only affords Megalopolis an easy aesthetic mashup of Roman & Manhattan architecture on which to build its chintzy CG future-world, but it also gives Coppola a platform to complain about the newfangled things that bother him as a geriatric grump, like cancel culture, queer people, and Taylor Swift. The signs that America has lost its way in amoral decadence include public lesbian smooching, pop music hags like Swift masquerading as teenage virgins, journalists framing great men for fabricated sex crimes, and mouth-breathing masses finding their bread-and-circuses entertainment value in the lowly artform of professional wrestling. This, of course, could all be turned around if great men like Coppola were handed the reins of culture & governance, as represented in Adam Driver’s genius architect inventor who’s held back by small-minded bureaucrats. Driver’s Caesar Catalina has discovered & commodified a miraculous fix-all substance called Megalon that will transform society into a golden utopia through better housing, better fashion, better medicine, and better artistic inspiration . . . if only the evil government figures and conniving women in his life would just get out of the way. He discovered this substance by loving his wife very much, as the main supernatural conceit of the film is that it’s set in a world where all women are either villainous sluts or virtuous spouses, and the only way to save America from becoming the next Rome is by returning to old-fashioned family values. It looks & talks like a movie that cares about the future, but all of its actual ideas & attitudes long for the past.
Megalopolis is the ultimate vanity project, Coppola’s tribute to his own genius. It’s debatable whether he sees himself more as the outside-the-box architect of the future (Driver) or the wealthy but fading uncle who will ensure that future’s existence by keeping his money in the family (Jon Voight), but the movie is astonishingly masturbatory either way. I can’t get over his cowardice in not casting himself as an actor in one of those two roles, as is tradition with smaller-scale vanity projects like The Room, The Astrologer, and the Neil Breen oeuvre. Even more so, I can’t get over the hubris of making this $120 mediocrity about how his world-changing genius is held back by small-minded money men, when those same resources could have funded a dozen projects from younger visionaries who actually do have something new to say but no capital behind them. Coppola somehow doesn’t see that he’s the villain of his own piece. He’s the old-fashioned conservative mayor (Esposito) getting in the way of young, iconoclastic talent (Driver). If you look at the films produced by his company American Zoetrope, it’s essentially a nepo baby slush fund, investing mostly in properties that bear the Coppola family name (with occasional exceptions for sex-pest friends who can’t find funding elsewhere). Compare that to Martin Scorsese lending his name recognition as a producer to filmmakers like Joanna Hogg, Josephine Decker, and The Safdie Brothers. Both New Hollywood legends have benefited from the critical scam of “late style” forgiving some of the looser, lazier touches of their recent works, but only one has been investing in the future of filmmaking beyond his own mortality. Coppola has no moral obligation to spend his production money outside the bounds of his vanity or his family, but it’s a little rich to watch this self-funded self-portrait of misunderstood, cock-blocked genius projected on an IMAX screen at a corporate multiplex and not scoff at the lack of self-awareness.
There are fleeting moments of pleasure to be found in Megalopolis‘s 140min runtime. While most of the cast appears to be totally lost in terms of intent or tone, Adam Driver gives a commanding, compelling performance that vibrates at just the right frequency to match the uncanniness of the material (a skill put to much better use in the similarly bizarre Annette). Audrey Plaza & Shia LeBeouf gradually establish menacing chemistry together as a semi-incestuous duo of schemers who attempt a coup on Driver & Voight’s empire. Their softly kinky aunt-on-nephew sex scene together is maybe the one moment that genuinely works on a dramatic level, and the downfall of their failed plot to seize power is the one moment of genuinely successful humor: a visual gag involving John Voight’s lethal boner. However, even the punchline conclusion to their saga is a nasty, hateful lashing out at power-hungry women and gender-nonconformers that immediately sours the movie’s sole moment of levity. Visually & thematically, it’s all very limited and uninspired, but there are enough talented performers on the cast list to make sure something lands. Even the casting feels like a grotesque hoarding of misused resources, though, with formidable players like Laurence Fishburne, Kathryn Hunter, Dustin Hoffman, and Jason Schwarzman being given nothing to do except stand around and support or thwart Driver’s world-changing genius as humanity’s Savior Artist. After seeing Megalopolis, I’m less convinced than ever that any single man’s singular genius could possibly be the savior of anything. It’s a lot more likely that the resources earned by the world’s Great Men will be locked away in trophy cases, only to be passed down to family members as heirlooms & inherited wealth. There’s no real future here, just mawkish glorification of the past.
-Brandon Ledet
Swampflix 