Megalopolis (2024)

3 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

Roman Scandals

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Many moviegoers won't quite know what to make of this dense, intellectual, visionary artwork by octogenarian Francis Ford Coppola, but others will find Megalopolis revitalizing, transporting, and astonishing.

It's some time in the future, and architect Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) has been given a contract to demolish the slums of New Rome in order to build a new Utopia. His building material is one he invented called Megalon, which has certain special properties. Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), an enemy of Cesar's who wishes to keep things as they are, stands in his way. Cicero's daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), much to the chagrin of her father, goes to work for Cesar and winds up falling in love with him.

Meanwhile, Cesar's jilted former lover Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza) cooks up a plan to marry the wealthy and elderly banker Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight), Cesar's uncle, and get to Cesar through his money. And Cesar's troublemaking cousin Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf) decides he wants to get into politics. Tensions rise, and the future of New Rome is at stake; will it find new order, or fall into chaos?

A project that Coppola has had cooking for many decades, Megalopolis is without a doubt his most ambitious project since his 1970s heyday, though it does recall visual elements of movies like Rumble Fish and Bram Stoker's Dracula. It's packed with history and literature and a lifetime of knowledge, championing the idea that human beings have more in common than we don't, and that, with real communication, we can build a better tomorrow.

The movie goes for huge, outsized imagery, evoking innovative filmmakers that Coppola has admired over the years, like Federico Fellini, Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, Orson Welles, and Stanley Kubrick. (It even evokes king-sized silent-era classics like Abel Gance's 1927 Napoleon, which Coppola helped restore and re-release in 1980.)

Yet there's thought behind every image. If a man sits behind a desk that seems to be sinking into the floor, it's because the man is overwhelmed and uncertain of what to do next. If characters stand on a giant clock, it's to suggest that time is pressing. It's not just empty beauty. Coppola has sometimes had trouble conveying emotion in his more technologically advanced movies, but that's not a problem here; we can feel the passion and rage flowing between the characters.

However, Megalopolis is sometimes opaque, shooting off in so many directions that it might feel like tentacles of excess. It will certainly try the patience of some viewers. Yet history is on Coppola's side. Visionaries usually tend to baffle their audiences in the moment (as was the case with Apocalypse Now), but their courage to stick to their convictions eventually wins out, several years, and several viewings, down the road. This is a movie that may be discussed and appreciated while many other popular movies are forgotten.