Megalopolis
Francis Ford Coppola’s ambitious dream project of a future New York modelled on Rome is a tortuous exercise in overload.
Urban embrace: Nathalie Emmanuel and Adam Driver
Image courtesy of Entertainment Film Dists.
Just as Tinto Brass’s critically reviled Caligula (1979) is being reassessed in its new Ultimate Cut release on Blu-Ray, one day reviewers of the future may look kindly on Francis Ford Coppola’s epic folly. A 47-year-old vision from the visionary director of The Godfather, The Godfather Part II and Apocalypse Now, Coppola’s Megalopolis is the insanely ambitious concept of a future New York modelled on ancient Rome. But of course there is far more to it than that, as this sweeping lucky dip of cultural allusion namechecks Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and George Bernard Shaw, while paying visual homage to everybody from Hitler to Elvis.
The viewer is positively left choking on the references, as if witness to a bot that has been allowed to run rampant across the website of the New York Public Library. Adam Driver (The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, Annette, White Noise) plays Cesar Catilina, an architect who has won the Nobel prize for inventing a magical building material and who passes his time by stopping it. But there is sedition in the ranks as noble kinsmen and the proletariat rise up in a battle royal for power. There is a veritable array of Shakespearean complications as Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel), the beautiful daughter of the city mayor, Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), falls for the magnetic appeal of his nemesis, Cesar Catilina. The latter is planning to build a city of his own, Megalopolis, built from his game-changing bio-adaptive material, while his mistress Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), decides to marry the ageing banker Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight), who happens to be his (Cesar’s) uncle. Oh, and there’s tons more, with togas, gladiators and Shia LaBeouf in drag.
It's a ramshackle, deeply artificial affair, as Coppola reaches into his box of tricks to drench the screen in a myriad of zeotropic imagery, borrowing from the tropes of erstwhile filmmakers (Fritz Lang, William Cameron Menzies), while introducing his own giddy variations with massive sets, animation, CGI, split screen effects and amusing camera angles. There is an air of the self-congratulatory about it all, as if an aging wizard has rummaged deep into an old bag to recycle his timeworn tricks, congested with demented tonal shits. Needless to say, this self-indulgent vanity project could well bury Coppola for good, as the critical fraternity has come not to praise him.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Kathryn Hunter, Grace VanderWaal, Chloe Fineman, James Remar, D.B. Sweeney, Dustin Hoffman, Isabelle Kusman, Bailey Ives, Madeleine Gardella, Balthazar Getty.
Dir Francis Ford Coppola, Pro Barry Hirsch, Fred Roos, Michael Bederman and Francis Ford Coppola, Screenplay Francis Ford Coppola, Ph Mihai Mălaimare Jr, Pro Des Beth Mickle and Bradley Rubin, Ed Cam McLauchlin and Glen Scantlebury, Music Osvaldo Golijov, Costumes Milena Canonero, Sound Nathan Robitaille, Dialect coach Andrea Caban.
American Zoetrope/Caesar Film LLC-Entertainment Film Dists.
138 mins. USA. 2024. UK and US Rel: 27 September 2024. Cert. 15.
