Things I Liked and Disliked in 'Megalopolis'

A list

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I recently saw Megalopolis, the beleaguered passion project from legendary director Francis Ford Coppola, whose repertoire includes such classics as The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. This film is unlike those, in that it is not “good.”

Set in New Rome, which is New York City with the “doomed empire” vibes dialed up to ten, Megalopolis is the story — or fable, as the film immediately declares itself — of brilliant architect Cesar Catilina, played by Adam Driver, whose ambition is to build a shiny utopia out of Megalon, a magic synthetic material he discovered in his dead wife. He is vehemently opposed by Mayor Franklyn Cicero, played by Giancarlo Esposito, who likes New Rome exactly as it is — corrupt, impoverished, tacky, and dystopian, thank you very much! His wife, played by Kathryn Hunter, is alive, and does not contain any valuable construction materials of note. 

Mayor Cicero is vexed by the antics of his socialite daughter, Julia, played by Nathalie Emmanuel, who finds herself torn between loyalties when she falls for Catilina, her father’s greatest enemy. Meanwhile, Aubrey Plaza is Wow Platinum, a fading TV presenter eager to sleep her way to the top, and Shia LaBeouf is Clodio, an evil populist with a penchant for Nazi imagery. He spends a lot of time shouting “power to the people!” through a megaphone at mobs of men wearing leather fingerless gloves. Jon Voight is also here as Hamilton Crassus III, an octogenarian mega-rich banker whose vaults catch the eye of seductress Wow Platinum. 

In short: Creative genius wants to build Shangri-La out of a newly discovered supermaterial, Dead Wifeium, but the losers and haters can’t stand that his swag is too different, so they conspire to keep him down. On paper, it sounds like a Randian good time. Art deco! Great man theory! Effete detractors doing subterfuge! I wouldn’t cosign the politics, but I could get freaky with a movie like that. Unfortunately, a description of the plot of Megalopolis is not an accurate description of Megalopolis itself. Megalopolis itself is more like someone etched an incoherent Facebook rant about “the problem with society these days” on a marble slab and then beat you repeatedly about the head with it. The lettering is elegant, though. 

More than it’s about anything that actually happens in it, Megalopolis is a film about BIG IDEAS. It spends much of its two-hour-and-eighteen-minute runtime announcing these ideas on, yes, marble slabs, which function somewhat like title cards in silent films. Only, they are also read aloud to us. In case we can’t read. 

What are those BIG IDEAS? Corruption! Decadence! The fall of civilizations! The snakey nature of women! And, most importantly, there’s the idea of the artistic genius who simply wants to bring something pure and beautiful into existence, but is held back by the wickedness of a naughty world — small, fearful minds that refuse to let Cesar Catilina build Megalopolis because it “sounds weird” and “will flop at the box office.” One of the big ideas of Megalopolis is Megalopolis. 

Megalopolis is not a subtle film. So it’s all the more impressive that it still manages to be deeply confusing. Characters slip into reciting Shakespeare for no particular reason. Actual Hitler shows up. There’s a narrator, who is also Catilina’s chauffeur (or, perhaps, Adam’s Driver?), played by Laurence Fishburne, who helpfully explains themes and motifs when the imagery gets too complicated for us to understand, like the scene in which a statue of Lady Justice lies forlorn in a slum, burdened beneath heavy chains. In instances like these, Fishburne tells us in his deep, commanding voice that we are in a place where there is no justice.

It might sound like I really disliked Megalopolis. I can’t say it’s my favorite Coppola film (Marie Antoinette), but it’s not without its positive qualities. It has those. But, as with Megalon, the good stuff is hiding in a dead body. So, here’s me as both Cesar Catilina and Mayor Cicero, championing the beautiful and the filthy, in the form of a list of things I liked and disliked about Megalopolis. 

Spoilers for Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis below. 

The ‘I’m on Drugs!’ Scene

I love when, in cinema, a character takes drugs of some sort, and the lighting gets funky, and other characters’ faces float around and speak in distant echoes (typically words of admonishment). Megalopolis has a spectacular “I’m tripping balls, man” sequence. I wish the whole film had been like that. I wanted to see more of a sweaty Adam Driver sprouting limbs like a Hindu deity and spinning around like a sock in a washing machine. I love to have fun. 

Aubrey Plaza Is Wow Platinum 

She sure is! 

The Extremely Frequent Booing of the Mayor 

I saw Megalopolis at an opportune time, that being, shortly after the indictment of Mayor Eric Adams. If Mayor Cicero is on screen, he is being booed. Boos are basically his leitmotif. I have forgotten a lot of Megalopolis, and I won’t see it again, so the following isn’t an exact recollection, but I love the spirit of it: At one point, while marching in a parade amidst vociferous boos, Mayor Cicero says something like, “they’re booing the mayor? At the mayor parade?”

I don’t think he really said that, but that’s what the scene felt like, and it’s the only part of Megalopolis I think about almost daily. Now, whenever I am slightly inconvenienced, I think, “booing the mayor… at the mayor parade…?” It was his special day, and they booed him. 

So Go Back to the Cluuuuuubbbb

This line reading from Adam Driver went viral on social media. It’s what compelled me to see Megalopolis in the first place, and it hits. When I saw it, I clapped like a seal. 

It also comes hot on the heels of another great moment in which Catilina says to Julia, “You think one year of medical school entitles you to plow through the riches of my Emersonian mind?” And then Julia says “Entitles me?” like, six times. If the whole film had been more like this sixty or so seconds, I would have liked it a lot more. The film should have been this exchange followed by unbearably long montages of Adam Driver dissociating on New Roman ketamine while Nathalie Emmanuel’s immaculate face flies around in low opacity saying “Entitles me?” in various accents. I’d have a lot fewer critiques. 

The Rubber Stamp that Says ‘DIED OF AN OVERDOSE’ 

There is a scene in which Julia, while researching Catilina, comes across files related to the investigation into Catilina’s dead wife (an investigation conducted by Mayor Cicero, whatever, it’s a whole thing). Specifically, there’s a manila folder that’s been smacked with a giant rubber stamp that reads “DIED OF AN OVERDOSE.” Or something like that. I can’t remember the exact words, but they were comically oversized and specific, and I enjoyed that a lot. I want my own enormous “DIED OF AN OVERDOSE” stamp for my home office.

The Outfits 

I loved the “Ancient Rome meets NYC” looks. It was fashion, to me. There were lots of suits that were also togas, lots of ornate embroidery, lots of gold leaves and gemstones. Like many things about Megalopolis, the costumes were on-the-nose, but, in this case, it was in a good way. I want Catilina’s drapey black suit thing. I would wear it to brunch and belittle my acquaintances in it. Using my intelligence. 

‘Stop Time!’ 

I neglected to mention that Cesar Catilina has the power to stop time. He does this by saying, “stop time!” He uses this once or twice, but never for anything important. I’ve seen some people on social media wonder why he doesn’t use it more, which is funny to me. It makes me imagine Cesar Catilina as a Super Smash Brothers character. “Stop Time!” is one of his special moves, like Bayonetta’s Witch Time. 

I actually have no problem with this device. It’s whimsical, to me. It’s one of the creative decisions that I think actually works in the service of the film’s themes, and it made me appreciate how Coppola sees filmmaking as a struggle against time. It definitely would have come in handy to use when a child drew a pistol and shot Catilina in the face, though. Like, as a superpower, not a motif. Bullets go right through those. 

The Fritz Lang of it All

I’m a big fan of Metropolis by Fritz Lang. I would argue it’s the better executed Opolis. But I think Megalopolis works best when I imagine it as a classic silent film, wherein some of the movie’s more overt, exaggerated, and obvious choices could be contextualized as an homage to playing it big in the absence of sound. But we do have sound, and it’s used to say things like “You're anal as hell, Cesar. I, on the other hand, am oral as hell.” So. 

That It’s Cinema 

I may not have loved Megalopolis, but it did make me wish I lived in a world in which there were more films like it, more risks taken, more ridiculous films that exist strictly for the sake of film itself. Whatever criticisms I have, I appreciate that it’s art! In my perfect world, my utopia, my Megalopolis, if you will, there would be more weird, difficult, unwieldy films with massive budgets behind them. On this, Megalopolis and I agree. 

The Utopia in Question

The entire film hinges on the fact that Catilina has the blueprint for this perfect society, made out of Megalon, which is a pale goldenish material. But his only proof of concept is a moving sidewalk, like the kind we already have in airports, and a house that is also a flower. When demoing Megalopolis to the citizens of New Rome, he has them stand on a moving sidewalk, and they are quite wowed by this for some reason, as if LaGuardia doesn’t offer a roughly equivalent experience.

The rest of Megalopolis is shown in the form of sketches and outlines until the end of the film. Now, I may not be the most sophisticated fella, but you can’t just show me a bunch of wiggly buildings and tell me that’s utopia. I’ve seen a lot of weird buildings in my day, and I’ve never thought that moving into one would automatically fix my problems. Only some of them. 

In the film, space to build Megalopolis is helpfully provided by New Rome’s equivalent of 9/11. A Russian satellite falls to earth and levels a chunk of Manhattan (or whatever they call it in New Rome). Megalopolis springs up to replace it. In this sense, Megalopolis is not so different at all from the Oculus, a weird-shaped shopping mall built at Ground Zero. 

It’s disappointing to me that, in a film that’s supposed to be so concerned with society and the future of human civilization, utopia is more or less real estate. The film’s visuals of Megalopolis reminded me of those posters people put out in front of construction sites depicting computer renderings of what the apartment complex will look like when it’s done and featuring those fake CGI people walking around in front of it. Sometimes there’s a salad bowl chain restaurant on the bottom floor. Sometimes not. 

I guess I’m not altogether opposed to living in a city made of gold with moving sidewalks. But would I still have to pay rent? Would I get to live in the same kind of flower house as Mayor Cicero, or will there be some flower neighborhoods that are better than others? Will there be golden Megalon gay bars? Hello?

The Archival Footage of Hitler 

Not super necessary. 

‘I Like Her’ 

This is a trope that occasionally shows up in movies and TV shows, and I hate it more every single time I see it. Often, when someone isn’t quite sure how to write a compelling woman character, they will try to get the audience to like her by having a male character vocally endorse her, typically after she does something masculine-coded or feisty and storms off. There will be an awkward silence, and then a man will announce to the room, “I like her.” I swear this is a thing. It happens in Megalopolis. 

Laurence Fishburne, after doing a soliloquy about the sassy Julia who is dishing it right back to Cesar Catilina, turns to the camera and says, “I like her.” Ugh! I’m booing this trope like it’s the fictional mayor of New Rome, or the actual mayor of New York City. 

The Properties of Megalon

I’m fine with Megalon being kept intentionally vague as a golden dream substance capable of constructing the best damn apartment complex the Upper East Side has ever seen. That’s fine. I think Megalon is supposed to be love, kind of, which is the stuff great art is also made of. I would live in an apartment unit made of love. I essentially live in one made of hate right now (Brooklyn). 

Megalon starts to lose me a bit, though, by also having insane medical applications. In the film, Cesar Catilina gets shot in the face by a child. It’s a bit much to get into (the fascist tuba player hired a twelve-year-old to do it). In any case, a bullet goes straight through Catilina’s dome, but, luckily, he has Megalon to fix it. He wears a bandage for a while and in one scene he unwraps it to reveal that half his face is now Megalon. It doesn’t stay that way, though. In the next scene, somehow half of his face has returned. 

What I’m saying is that Cesar Catilina essentially discovered the cure for getting shot in the face, used on himself, then went right back to obsessing over its more urgent use, that being, as a substance to build moving sidewalks out of. The sidewalks do not even move people particularly fast.

That It’s Not Even Weirder

I probably sound like one of the rubes that populate New Rome, afraid of change and new ideas. It could be so. Perhaps my brain has atrophied in our modern era of sloptent. But I think what I was most excited about, when sitting down for Megalopolis, was the prospect of seeing a legendary filmmaker’s self-funded swan song. Nothing left to prove. Nothing holding him back. I was ready to be smacked in the face! 

But there wasn’t really a human hand to slap me with. I never quite located a pulse in Megalopolis, a film with more metaphors and motifs and themes than it knows what to do with. I guess I expected that a project born of pure passion would itself be brimming with life, with humanity. But everything in it is lofty and intangible. It could have been interesting if Megalopolis, the film’s utopia, reflected this. But actually, Megalopolis is completely tangible. You can move into it in the world of the film. It’s real. It exists. The movie ends with a triumphant kiss inside Megalopolis. There’s something unsatisfying about that to me.

The film is about the artist’s struggle to bring a divinely-inspired vision down to an imperfect earth, and all the challenges that accompany that (rather egotistical) mission. Coppola, who has been trying to get this film made for decades, knows those challenges well. I guess I thought Megalopolis, for all its odes to philosophy and its quoting of great thinkers, might have more to say about that existential burden — loving an idea so much, believing in it to such an absurd degree, against all objections and logistical hurdles, that you’re willing to bet it all in the name of an abstraction that may or may not be everything you think it is. 

What’s thrilling about that notion, to me, is that last bit. That’s where the danger is. What if the idea, actually, isn’t as great as you think it is? Meta-textually, that’s sort of the story of Megalopolis. But in the text of the film, there’s no such danger. Catilina is right. Everyone in his way is wrong. He is not crazy whatsoever. And I guess I just wish that he, and this film, actually had been. 

Final verdict: It’s no Madame Web. 

John Paul