“When does an empire die? Does it collapse in one terrible moment? No, no... But there comes a time when its people no longer believe in it.” Fundi Romaine (Laurence Fishburne)
Francis Ford Coppola’s newest epic, Megalopolis, is a challenging, energetic mashup of Edward Gibbons’ Roman history, philosophy (Petrarch and Marcus Aurelius, anyone?), poetry, architecture, and flat-out fantasy about change in a city with strong resemblance to NYC. Although, like NYC and Rome, this sometimes-sci-fi setting is excessive but so visually satisfying that it covers the excess with endearing and repulsive characters in equal measure and ideas about the survival of an empire.
Cesar Catalina (Adam Driver) is an architect with a vision who threatens to upend the city with razing neighborhoods with a strong architectural and ethnic history. Opposing him is the greedy mayor, Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), whose daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), loves Cesar. Although the relationships are not quite as dense as, say, in The Godfather, they are pivotal as Cesar attempts to assert his genius and Cicero retains control with a restive citizenry. Coppola allows us to see the torment in the fractured Julia, the bitterness of a dad whose daughter loves his enemy, and a transforming architect stymied by opponents of change.
While the fate of the empire is Coppola’s primary concern, the writer-director guides us deftly with a modicum of congestion, through the political and personal mayhem accompanying any thriving city. Some may see too many characters and themes while others see a successful depiction of a dynamic, ever-growing metropolis.
Coppola has dedicated decades to this project and $120 million winery money for a frenetic and hopeful vison of a fallen empire and Utopian future, neither of which is easily dispatched but leans on the promise of the future. Although it is not difficult to see Ayn Rand’s Howard Roark or NYC’s Robert Moses genius creators or Coppola himself, the epic is more about the conjunction of genius and its times, anywhere, anytime. The recent Babylon film was a similar hot mess but lacked Megalopolis’s sense of resignation for the past and hope for the future.
The biggest hope in Megalopolis is that the 85-year-old genius, Francis Ford Coppola will pursue another magnum opus until, like empires, he cedes to the future.
Megalopolis
Director: Francis Ford Coppola (Apocalypse Now)
Screenplay: Coppola
Cast: Adam Driver (Marriage Story), Giancarlo Esposito (The Usual Suspects)
Rating: R
Length: 2 h 18s
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take (recently listed by Feedspot as two of the ten best NPR Movie Podcasts) out of WCBE 90.5 FM, Columbus, Ohio. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com