A Celebration of Cinema from an Original Auteur

You go to a museum and look at a painting on the wall, Picasso’s Nude in an Armchair. You stare at it, trying to figure it out. You see the eyes. And the lips. Mabe the hair. It’s stunning but almost impossible to describe, especially to someone who has never seen it. You eventually wander on to look at other art pieces, but everything seems pale and flat compared to what Picasso created. Nude in an Armchair haunts you; it becomes the filter through which you will see other art for a long time.

That’s the best way I can describe the sensation of sitting through Francis Ford Coppola’s new epic, Megalopolis: stunning and almost impossible to describe. So, instead of a ‘normal’ review, I will explore some of the sensations I felt watching it.

At the beginning, Coppola states that Megalopolis is a ‘fable,’ which Merriam-Webster defines as “a narration intended to enforce a useful truth…especially one intended to teach a lesson and in which animals speak and act like human beings.” With the possible exception of the faun-on-acid performance of Shia LeBeouf as Claudio, there aren’t any animals in Megalopilis. However, it’s clear from the first few scenes that the director is hellbent on teaching a lesson to his audience. You have to sift through a lot of other stuff to find it, and the payoff isn’t exactly earth-shattering, but it’s there.

Megalopolis is also, the press release states, “a Roman Epic set in an imagined Modern America. The City of New Rome must change, causing conflict between Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), a genius artist who seeks to leap into a utopian, idealistic future, and his opposition, Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who remains committed to a regressive status quo, perpetuating greed, special interests, and partisan warfare.” While I usually don’t quote a press release in a review, it helps a lot to have this basic explanation because, without it, watching Megalopolis can feel like you’ve stumbled into a college ancient history course and being handed the final on the first day of class. 

The film is dazzling visually. Coppola and cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr. (The Master) fill the screen with images that will stay with you much longer than anything the actors say or do. Not all of them feel part of the story; a lot of the razzle and dazzle they’ve built pulls you out of the narrative completely. Maybe they make more sense with repeated viewings when the wow factor is lessened. Perhaps they don’t and just look cool. 

Speaking of actors, Megalopolis has hundreds, ranging from the impressive to the inane. Adam Driver is a formidable presence on the screen, which is vital since his character, Cesar Catilina, is in just about every scene of the film’s 258-minute running time. There’s a distinction between Driver’s presence and his performance; he tries about everything to make Cesar compelling, but most of the time, he just feels quirky. Giancarlo Esposito’s performance is much more focused playing Cesar’s enemy. Mayor Cicero, but primarily because the part is underwritten to show him as either an angry politician or a disappointed dad. 

As Julia Cicero, the focus of Mayor Cicero’s disappointment and Cesar’s love, Nathalie Emmanuel (Game of Thrones) never finds her footing and gets lost among all the glitz and glamour of the world she lives in. That’s not a problem for Aubrey Plaza (Emily the Criminal), who outshines everything and everybody in Megalopolis as the unfortunately named Wow Platinum, a money-hungry financial newscaster who ruthlessly worms her way to the top of the power structure she reports on. Plaza is one of the most enjoyable and unpredictable actresses working today: she appears on the screen (big or small), and you are riveted, waiting to see what she will do or say. And while she cranks up that aspect of her abilities to 11 in Megalopolis, she adds a layer of subtlety to Platinum, mainly through her body language, that separates her from the hundreds of others in the film and makes it her movie.

Megalopolis is far from a perfect movie, but it is the rarest cinematic experience and an important film that deserves to be seen on the big screen with the best picture and sound. It’s a work of art from one of the greats in cinema, who reportedly footed the film’s $120 million budget out of his pocket because he couldn’t get a major studio to take the risk. All you need to do is look at the posters hanging on the walls of the theater as you walk down the hall – remakes, comic book movies, and, most unnecessary of all genres, the live-action remake of an animated film – to know the kind of safe bets Hollywood is putting their money into. It’s always been that way and always will. So how cool is it that an 85-year-old Maverick, who has some of cinema’s most significant achievements on his resume (Godfathers 1 & 2, Apocalypse Now, and The Conversation), finds the balls to risk it all on a dream movie that maybe only he fully understands?