‘Megalopolis’ or — Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Titter?
Unsubtle, ambitious, naive, dated, grandiose, forward-thinking, backward-looking and deliberately inadvertently (I never knew there was such a thing!) hilarious Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Megalopolis’ (2024) plays like a mash-up of Fellini’s ‘Satyricon’ (1969) and Richard Kelly’s ‘Southland Tales’ (2006) as time-bending sci-fi meets Imperial Rome. Or maybe imagine Ayn Rand’s ‘The Fountainhead’ if it hadn’t been written by a complete asshole but one of the Furry Freak Brothers instead (I’d put my money on Freewheelin’ Franklin).
The story is deceptively simple — Caesar Catilina (Adam Driver) doesn’t like the city he lives in so wants to build a new one. Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) thinks the city’s fine as it is so doesn’t see the need for change. Sure, there’s some peripheral stuff about politics, finance, society and the media but none of it significantly impacts the main, central thrust of rebuilding the city.
What does make an impact, however, is the sheer indulgence on display with Coppola gorging himself on the cinematic spread he’s laid out for himself, meaning it’s less like watching a movie and more like observing a Golden Retriever left unattended at an all you can eat buffet (“Chester! You’ll make yourself sick!”).
Throw in some cringe-worthy Shakespeare quotes and Tinto Brass-run-amok production design and you can feel the Hindenburg-shaped spectre of impending disaster about to explode before your eyes.
Except that doesn’t happen. The hydrogen doesn’t ignite, the flaming edifice doesn’t come crashing down and people didn’t start running out the cinema screaming “Oh, the humanity!”. Shockingly, ‘Megalopolis’ is far from a catastrophe and could even be called “genuinely good” if it wasn’t for the suspicion that “genuinely good” isn’t what Coppola’s going for here. No, he’s going for something else, and I think that something else is “Get out of the way because I’m doing whatever the fuck I want!”
Neither is it an impenetrable mess. It isn’t sloppy, ill-disciplined or unfocused. Indeed, you could accuse it of being TOO laboured over as though we’re examining every angled surface of a priceless diamond through the narrow lens of jeweller’s loupe with obsessively fixed concentration. Admittedly, when what we’re scrutinising involves Shia LaBeouf performing oral sex while having his hair cut then that could drive some people up the bloody wall but, for others, it might just be another lustrous facet of this glittering, multi-coloured gem.
And that could be the best way to view Coppola’s movie (or should that be the only bearable way?) because the film definitely has a captivating rhythm and flow to its images. Sure, you might be laughing your ass off at these sliding and liquefied phantasms but they’re still somewhat captivating, even soothing, nonetheless (it’s like watching a lava lamp that’s been given a vague narrative).
Also, for all the promise of end-of-Empire hedonism the tone is distinctly optimistic, even if the answer to creating this new world seems to be… horizontal escalators??? Oh well but, then again, I would never have thought of that because I’m not a visionary.
‘Megalopolis’ is, without a doubt, the work of someone spending $100,000,000 of their own money and, justifiably, doing whatever the hell they want with it, and that’s fantastic. It’s also far from the worst film of 2024. In fact, I think it might be the most interesting.
What can I say? I liked it!
