‘Megalopolis’ Review

Stars: Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Kathryn Hunter, Chloe Fineman, James Remar, D.B. Sweeney, Isabelle Kusman, Bailey Ives, Madeleine Gardella, Balthazar Getty, Romy Mars, Haley Sims, Dustin Hoffman | Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Director Francis Ford Coppola reputedly spent 40 years making Megalopolis, raising the $120m budget by selling some of his vineyards. Sadly, both time and money could probably have been better spent elsewhere, because the end result falls squarely in the “interesting failure” camp, rather than being the epic masterpiece he undoubtedly envisioned. Still, it’s not without its moments.

The film takes place in New Rome, effectively an alternate version of New York City. Adam Driver plays genius architect Cesar Catilina, who can seemingly halt the flow of time and who has invented a miracle building material known as Megalon, with which he plans to construct a futuristic cityscape. His chief antagonist is Mayor Frank Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who despises Catilina, having previously attempted to prosecute him for the death of his wife in mysterious circumstances, and who is infuriated when his beautiful daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) falls for him and begins to work for his company.

Also in the mix is billionaire Hamilton Crassus (Jon Voight), the head of a banking dynasty with the power to fund Catilina’s dream project. Early on, he marries Catilina’s former mistress, ambitious TV reporter Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), while his weirdo grandson Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf) parades ostentatiously about town, harbouring dreams of fronting a populist political movement.

As the character names indicate, and the script makes explicit, Coppola sees a parellel between modern-day New York and Ancient Rome, and the film effectively wonders aloud whether our society is also similarly heading for collapse. The parallels are further enhanced by one of the film’s best conceits, turning Madison Square Garden into a Colosseum, complete with gladiator fights and chariot races, as well as a performance by pop star Vesta Sweetwater (Grace VanderWaal), which does not go as planned.

Unfortunately, despite throwing around some big ideas about love and power and art and commerce (it’s not hard to see the parallels with Coppola himself as the genius artist, denied the financing for his epic vision), Megalopolis never really comes together, and there’s actually surprisingly little in the way of tangible plot. The script is also all over the place for the most part – one character gets killed off in a hilariously random fashion and just disappears, while the supposedly central idea about Catilina being able to stop time serves no dramatic purpose whatsoever.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that the effects and production design work look so cheap, despite the whopping budget. It’s also weirdly lit, with the predominant colours being gold and black, for some reason.

In fairness, Megalopolis does have its moments, most of which revolve around Aubrey Plaza, who’s clearly having a whale of a time. Highlights include her seductions of both Catilina and Clodio, the latter of which is probably destined for some sort of cult status. For that matter, LaBeouf is a lot of fun too, particularly when he’s tossing out lines like, “Revenge tastes best when wearing a dress”.

Elsewhere, it’s a treat to see Nathalie Emmanuel handed such a big role and she’s excellent as Julia, except she also seems to be in a completely different movie to everyone else, tonally speaking, playing everything completely straight. Driver, for his part, is good value as Catilina, though the likes of Jason Schwartzman, Dustin Hoffman and James Remar are rather wasted in supporting roles and you have to wonder if the majority of their parts ended up on the cutting room floor.

In the end, it’s true that Megalopolis is pretentious and full of itself and basically nonsense, but there are flashes of the film it could have been and moments of craziness (most notably a memorable confrontation between Voight, LaBeouf and Plaza) that almost make the whole thing worthwhile, in a so-bad-it’s-good sort of way.

On top of that, you have to admire Coppola for taking such big swings – okay, so he misses, but at least he takes them. A key part of that, the desire to show audiences something new, comes with the film’s weirdest bit of innovation – at the screenings at the Cannes Film Festival, during a press conference scene, the lights went up a little and someone walked on stage with a microphone, in order to ask Adam Driver’s character a question. That genuine w-t-f moment was really something and is apparently being repeated in selected screenings around the country, though check with your local cinema first!

In short, as mentioned above, this is the textbook definition of an interesting failure. Is it a good movie? No. But we can be glad it exists, and it might even end up achieving a cult following (the sort where people yell lines at the screen), with a prevailing wind.

** 2/5

Megalopolis is in cinemas now.