Megalopolis

That this year's MEGALOPOLIS is a huge mess of a movie did not surprise me.  It shouldn't surprise anyone, really.  What can we expect from director Francis Ford Coppola at this stage, as for the past twenty years he's created art films like YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH and TEATRO, considered unwatchable by many viewers.   A man who sold off a portion of his vineyard to finance this opus himself, as he had long grown disenchanted with the studio system. One hundred a twenty mil.  I guess I can see it all up there on the screen.  This film, if nothing else, is always visually interesting.

  

But Coppola's screenplay, which imagines New York City in an alternate dimension, feels like a ninth grader's first draft. "New Rome" is set in current day but its impending demise mirrors events centuries ago to certain years B.C. and A.D, when a certain empire rose and fell. Mostly the Catilinarian conspiracy era.  We even have a guy named Caesar (Adam Driver), a genius inventor with the ability to stop time, who envisions (and plans to create) a utopia called Megalopolis rising from the ashes of New Rome, which is governed by conservative mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito).  There will be interactions between their families.   Caesar's uncle Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight) will marry the much younger T.V. personality Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza). Caesar will become involved with Cicero's daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel).

There are scandals.  Caesar's wife died mysteriously in a car crash off a bridge. Crassus' grandson Clodio (Shia LaBeouf) fabricates a video that implicates Caesar in a sexual relationship with Vesta (Grace VanderWaal), a teen pop star who sells abstinence as part of her image.  Clodio will go on to become some sort of fascist mouthpiece, rallying the weary residents of New Rome against Caesar and Cicero.  And so on.  Do you see the present day parallels? 

Lots of half baked ideas based on the writings of folks like Tacitus.  Characters in this film will quote Shakespeare at length. Coppola stated that he was also inspired by Herman Hesse and anthropologist David Graeber.  The result is a liberal manifesto that is clumsy at best.  Wincingly pretentious at worst. Sometimes dull.  Fleetingly though, as something odd is surely only a moment away.  MEGALOPOLIS - it's really difficult to describe.

But easy to see why it went wrong.  There were no checks and balances.  This is the bloated result of a madman free to realize his every passion.  Not the first time, as APOCALYPSE NOW was born out of similar obsession.  But the insanity of Vietnam was a perfect canvas for the director's eccentricities.  The poetry there, based on the writings of Joseph Conrad, was stirring.  Any poetry here is juvenile.  I guess the "once a man twice a child" line is true.

Let's not talk about the abrupt editing and the subplots that are introduced but go nowhere.  Will there be a longer version that remedies these? Highly likely. 

Mihai Malaimare Jr.'s cinematography is bathed in a golden hue.  It looks impressive and phony.  Patently artificial.  I guess that suits the material.  The actors seem to be in different movies, though most are dedicated enough.  Driver is OK, more or less doing his usual brooding.  Voight surprised with a feisty performance.  Plaza does her usual bitchy thing, spending the movie in perpetual horniness, and always amusing.  LaBeouf was appropriately cast.  Dustin Hoffman has a small role, none too interesting.  Longtime Coppola collaborator Laurence Fishburne is on hand as Fundi Romaine, Caesar's assistant, in an amiable turn.

If you are any sort of cinephile of course this is unmissable.  A piece of history, even.  Is this an already misunderstood classic? Destined to be lauded in the utopia/dystopia to come? Despite my numerous misgivings with MEGALOPOLIS, I'm glad Mr. Coppola lived to realize it.