The Tartan

Spoiler warning for “Megalopolis.”

“Megalopolis” is a verifiable epic, created and self-funded by film legend Francis Ford Coppola. As an allegory for the fall of Rome set in a futuristic New York-esque “New Rome,” the film follows the butting heads of two visionaries. On one side is Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), a cynic who fights for the status quo, and on the other is Cesar Catalina (Adam Driver), a bold genius with plans to build a utopia — his Megalopolis. 

Along the way, Cesar must contend with his greedy elderly uncle Alexander Crassus III (Jon Voight), sabotage from his cousin Clodio Pulcher (Shia LeBeouf), and his budding romance with Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), Cicero’s daughter. Crassus eventually marries the money-hungry TV presenter Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza). Their wedding is held in a modern Roman Coliseum, filled with chariots, giant golden eagles, dancing clowns, Confederate flags, and a pledge of virginity sung by pop star Vesta and her 15 (holographic?) clones. At one point a defunct USSR satellite dramatically crashes into New Rome and is never mentioned again. At another point Crassus (dressed as Robin Hood), implores Clodio (dressed as a gladiator) and Wow (dressed as Cleopatra) to look at the absolute tent he is pitching under the blanket on his lap and exclaims, “What do you think of this boner I’ve got!” He then reveals that his hog is actually a bow and arrow and shoots the pair, killing Wow and wounding Clodio’s butt. 

I hope you get the point by now — this movie is criminally insane. I can fill this entire review with just a list of quotes and events in the plot and it would still be entertaining. Basically every other sequence is something that cinema has never seen before and won’t ever see again. On paper this sounds like a blast, but in reality, I am afraid to admit, the movie is the mother of all messes. Don’t get me wrong, I love weird, surreal art — David Lynch and Charlie Kaufman are some of my favorite filmmakers. But the key thing is those directors often pair their surreality with slow pacing. This gives the audience time to reflect and creates negative space to put attention on the important parts of the composition. Coppola, on the other hand, opts to ram all his weirdness at you all at once as fast as a freight train. And just as fast does it exit your brain  —  none of the weirdness ever stuck with me in any tangible way. 

There are certainly other issues in the film — criminally bad ADR, confusing editing, effects so unconvincing that I’m still trying to parse whether they were intentional or not — but this the big one. The inscrutable density of meaning and ideas and imagery is the film’s fatal flaw. It’s currently a box office bomb. However, I don’t get the sense that Coppola would care about that all that much. On a thematic level, the film denounces the pursuit of profit, and advocates for creating art with the potential to outlast its creator. 

But that’s not all the film is about. It’s also about how the concept of civilization is inherently at odds with humanity. It’s also about love’s power to melt cynicism and bring about hope. Sometimes the movie wants to be about partisan politics and the need for public debate  —  “When you have a debate, that basically is a utopia.” Sometimes it wants to be about gender, or string theory, or the hydrostatic skeleton of jellyfish. It’s about everything, and as a result, it’s about nothing in particular. 

The poster calls “Megalopolis” a fable. Usually fables make things general. They use simple imagery as metaphor for abstract subjects in order to communicate a simple moral. Think of the tortoise and the hare — the two animals are metaphors to help convey the importance of patience. What Megalopolis does so ingeniously is use a condensed metaphor soup to convey 10,000 morals. Clodio, an allegorical stand-in for the Roman politician Clodius, allies with a Nazi to sow partisan warfare into the streets and pursue financial gain. (As an aside, said Nazi has a Black Sun tattooed on his forehead and at one point stands on a tree trunk inexplicably grown into the shape of a Swastika.) At the end Clodio is strung up upside down in a Mussolini-esque assassination as a 100 dollar bill fades into the background. Do you see the problem? A Roman politician is being used as an allegory for facism which is being used as an allegory for, I don’t know, greed or capitalism? It’s complexity for the sake of complexity. It’s symbolism stacked on symbolism stacked on symbolism into a Jenga tower so high that it crumbles under its own weight. And this is just one example — it’s all like this.

Furthermore, the film is so crammed that it must eschew any subtlety in how it actually conveys meaning. This fact rears its ugly head the most when it comes to characterization. Clodio spies on Julia in the car with Cesar, and while sobbing, states matter-of-factly, “I love you, Julia.” Cesar pompously interrupts the mayor’s unveiling of his city plan, and the mayor, in response, states matter-of-factly, “You don’t love people, Cesar.” Julia, driving in riotous slums, passes by the iconic statue of Lady Justice as it comes to life and faints; Julia states matter-of-factly into her recorder-ing (don’t worry about it), “Injustice is all around us.” I think you get the point. It seems Coppola figured that personal motivations and characterization must be spoken aloud, rather than shown, as clearly as possible in fear that otherwise it may be lost in all the noise. But if it’s clarity he wanted, maybe he should have cut down the script by, say, 90 percent rather than awkwardly telling us things outright. Maybe then the movie would feel like an actual movie. 

Any semblance of humanity or personality the characters could have had is destroyed. The leads, particularly the two rivals Cesar and Cicero, are not human, but rather ideology incarnate. Almost every line of dialogue is spent spouting tenets of their contrasting philosophies at each other. Because of that, I cannot for the life of me bring myself to care during the rare humanistic scenes of Cesar falling in love with Julia or Cicero holding his newborn granddaughter. 

With all of this said, are there any good takeaways? I can name a few. Shia LeBouf, as much of a nightmare as he is in real life, miraculously gives a performance that works for me sometimes. His delivery shares the manic energy of the script. There are some genuinely novel cinematographic techniques. There are a few shots of Cesar in a drug trip where the actor and the set are both suspended sideways. The effect is of him straining against gravity, which works surprisingly well to put us in his mental state. The film is very multimedia, forming a haphazard production design that is shoddy but imaginative. One evocative moment occurs during yet another hallucinatory trip as Cesar dies. We see a painting of a woman’s womb, before the image shifts and we realize it’s painted onto people’s bodies, who twist to reveal another image of rocks on a sea floor. The biggest tragedy is that there are actually enough evocative images to cobble together a great regularly-paced movie, but picking them out is like trying to find a couple dozen needles in a Mount Everest-sized haystack.  

Why is the film like this? I usually don’t like speculating on the mental state of an artist; art should speak for itself. But if the mouth of the art is a master-genius architect who is so clearly a stand-in for the director himself, then I think speculating on Coppola’s mindset is appropriate. “Megalopolis” has been brewing in Coppola’s mind since 1977, collecting and collecting into an amalgamation of subplots and story beats and concepts for nearly five decades. All $120 million of the film’s budget came from his pocket, so there weren’t any executive notes forcing him to trim the fat. But perhaps more importantly, the man is 85 years old. As depressing as it is to admit, he won’t have many opportunities left to put all those ideas jammed in his brain onto screen. So under that existential pressure, I think anyone would feel hesitant to cut anything out. We feel the anxiety of this cosmic ticking clock leaking out into the film itself. Cesar espouses art’s great ability to outlive the artist and suspend a moment in time, literally commanding time to freeze with, “Time, stop for me.” And Cesar does construct his utopia, a brighter future for his granddaughter (literally named “Sunny Hope”) to live in, one built on debate and nature and unity. 

But, as with everything else, there isn’t enough time to say anything genuinely nuanced about this utopia. The most politically charged things the movie seems it can muster is “Debate is good,” and “Fascism and greed are bad.” If there’s anything good to be said about the messaging of the film it would be that it is refreshingly uncynical. I find myself growing tired of misanthropic art, where the world is a dark cruel place filled with inherently evil people. “Megalopolis” is not that — it ends with children delivering a “Pledge of Allegiance to Humanity.” And there is a sort of earnestness in this I can appreciate, a lack of a communication barrier between the audience and Coppola’s dreams for us after he’s gone. With that said, maybe “Megalopolis” would have actually worked if it were not a film but instead a novel or series of essays. There’s simply too much to say in a little over two hours, even if the cognitive overload makes it feel like 12.

This is all to say, would I recommend “Megalopolis”? Yes, I would. Let me explain — I hope I’ve made it clear that the movie is not good. Nor is it so-bad-it’s-good like “The Room.” Nor is it really something in between. But it isn’t boring, nor is it cynical, nor is it uncreative. If “Megalopolis” is anything, it’s trying. My Lord, is it trying.