” Megalopolis” is the Kamala Harris of fame arthouse cinema. The monstrously optimistic big-budget technology fiction/fantasy play, written and directed by one of cinema’s greatest voices, is intended as an exceedingly earnest, enthusiastic, and pleasant art. However, when it comes to matters of substance, it’s awkward and crazy, feeling obtuse, headache-inducing, and centered on vibes to keep it moving ahead— while also being defended by a strident terminally online fanbase.
39 times before a contested election, it seems acceptable for a movie like this to be made. But, this is certainly not new territory for producer Francis Ford Coppola, the liberal cowboy behind visual treasures like” The Godfather”,” The Conversation”, and” Apocalypse Today”. His movies are renowned for slandering Vietnam’s international policy and denying the American Dream. As film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum points out, Michael Dukakis ‘ campaign against George H. W. Bush was coincidentally released with his populist anti-corporate passion project” Tucker: The Man And His Dream.”  ,
” Megalopolis” cannot be accused of being shy about its politics. It directly focuses on the imperfect strategy that great men must employ to combat the forces of management centrism and nazi backsliding in order to create a better society. It is a monstrously optimistic function, if only because it hurls a thousand suggestions at once to its viewers and demands that they consider each one of them. You either love or hate it, as evidenced by its startlingly reduced$ 4 million total for its open trip.  ,  ,
The whole subject — Francis Ford Coppola Presents” Megalopolis: A Legend”— says a bit about its concept and how it wants you to join with it. It explicitly attempts to spin a fantasy yarn with ramblings reminiscent of those of a schizophrenic hippie grandfather and a direct message.  ,  ,
Set in the fictional city of New Rome, the film follows three characters — Cicero, Claudio, and Caesar— as they attempt to shape the future of a declining decadent American metropolis. Characters in the film participate in pagan weddings and chariot races at Madison Square Garden, which are very sensitive references to the Roman Republic’s fall. Effectively, it’s a loose retelling of the Roman Catilinarian conspiracy, told through the lenses of technocratic urban planning and progressive utopian futurism.  ,
Caesar is a visionary city planner who has set his sights on reshaping a large portion of the city as a monument to humanity using a recently discovered building material called Megalon. The city’s centrist Mayor Cicero, who sees the project as an ambitious potential failure and waste of time, opposes his plan to construct” Megalopolis.” As they battle it out, they face intermediary difficulties from Cicero’s lascivious daughter falling in love with Caesar, a lurid television presenter ambitiously marrying the city’s lead banker to advance her position, and Claudio’s attempts to elicit a populist revolution made up of Neo-Confederates, Skinhead Nazis, and populist patriots waving Betsy Ross flags.  ,
Minor spoiler: The movie’s final shot is just a title card that says,” I pledge allegiance to our human family and to all the species that we protect. One Earth, indivisible, with long life, education, and justice for all” . ,
The movie’s message almost epitomizes Kamala Harris ‘ mocked notion of “what can be unburdened by what has been” in a literal sense. It’s a fable about the joys of willingly leap forward into the unknown and realizing that you’ll be able to walk on your feet without thinking.  ,
It is impossible to define a story as plain as “good” or “bad” in such a blunt and oblique way. ” Megalopolis” is n’t either. Film students are still going to be inflicted with the film in a century trying to understand it alongside Bergman’s” Persona” and Godard’s” Breathless”. It’s a furious montage of sound, images, and Shakespeare/Marcus Aurelius quotes that overwhelms the senses with its implications, and that’s before factoring it that its also technically a time travel movie.
It’s been compared to the” Star Wars” prequels,” Matrix Resurrections”,” Sucker Punch”, and the collective films of Neil Breen, which have dedicated audiences despite their severe flaws. Although its performances can best be described as Wiseauian or Breen-esque, Adam Driver resolutely plays the part and delivers one of the most oddly compelling performances in contemporary cinema. Its CGI is intermittently expensive-looking but is also Brechtian in its obviousness. It wants you to know it’s fake. It’s clear everything in the film is Coppola’s vision, and your ability to appreciate what he’s trying to articulate comes down to how much you respect its earnestness.  ,
The 85-year-old Coppola certainly wants” Megalopolis” to be his comeback film — which is particularly notable for a director who has n’t directed a positively received film since 1997’s” The Rainmaker”. Despite self-financing a handful of recent low-budget indie films like” Twixt”,” Tetro”, and” Youth Without Youth”, his filmmaking glory days are well behind him, but he wants another chance to hit an ambitious homerun. He’s been sitting on the concept for” Megalopolis” since 1977 and never had a chance to film it.  ,
Coppola remains a stubbornly independent maverick after six decades of filmmaking, even against his fellow progressives. He refinanced and staked a$ 200 million stake in his Coppola Winery in 2021 to contribute to the production budget for the movie. As Rolling Stone reports, he even went out of his way to hire” canceled” actors like Jon Voight and Shia LaBeouf to avoid being written off as” some woke Hollywood production” . ,
If anything, the film’s arrogance makes it attractive and worth talking about. The film is an act and a celebration of sheer hubris, according to critic Richard Brody of the New Yorker. A clear dramatic framework and Coppola’s sheer sense of power are two things that keep this contrivance in a tenuous balance. It’s a film that is astounded with its light as possible, full of profound contradictions and illogical holes. But as Rosenbaum writes, the film “lands in our laps both happier and dumber for its lack of inhibitions” . ,
In a vibes-based year,” Megalopolis” is the most vibes-based film. It feels like 2024. It’s hard not to respect it. It succeeds in being fervently joyful.  ,
Tyler Hummel is a Nashville-based freelance journalist, a College Fix Fellow, and a member of the Music City Film Critics Association. He has contributed to The Dispatch, The New York Sun, Hollywood in Toto, The Pamphleteer, Law and Liberty, Main Street Nashville, North American Anglican, Living Church, and Geeks Under Grace.