GoMovieReviews Rating: ★★1/2
Rated: M
Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola
Written by: Francis Ford Coppola
Produced by: Francis Ford Coppola, Barry Hirsch, Fred Roos, Michael Bederman
Starring: Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia Labeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Talia Shire, Kathryn Hunter, Grace Vanderwall, Chloe Fineman and Dustin Hoffman.
‘I will not let time have dominion over me.’
Megalopolis begins.
At first, I thought Megalopolis was going to be about perspective. With Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) opening a window to step out, onto a roof to look over the city before him, to walk to the edge while the clouds race across the sky. He looks over the roofline, teetering, about to fall. Then, he stops time.
It’s a new Rome.
A narrator, Funi Romaine (Laurence Fishburne), shown later to be a historian, speaks of not wanting to make the same mistakes as Old Rome, mistakes that benefit a few at the expense of the many.
So the main underlying theme here is social change with A LOT of other ideas thrown in the mix creating an overly ambitious chaos full of lofty ideals used to intellectualise the storyline but instead comes across as pretentious and cliché; an example when Cesar Catilina starts spouting, ‘To be, or not to be,’ to sell his architectural utopia.
Writer, director and producer, Francis Ford Coppola states:
‘Step by step with these beginnings, I researched New York City’s most interesting cases from my scrapbooks: the Claude Von Bulow murder case, the Mary Cunningham/James Agee Bendix scandal, the emergence of Maria Bartiromo (a beautiful financial reporter nicknamed ‘The Money Honey’ coming from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange), the antics of Studio 54, and the city’s financial crisis itself (saved by Felix Rohatyn), so that everything in my story would be true and did happen either in modern New York or in Ancient Rome.
To that I added everything I had ever read or learned about.’
Cesar Catilina is a genius born into a mega rich Catilina family.
The Cesar has won a Nobel prize for inventing a new building material, Megalon.
His vision, to build a new city for all by tearing down the old and building Megalopolis.
The mayor, Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), disagrees.
Mayor Cicero thinks Cesar will destroy society before he has time to build a new one, to which Cesar replies, ‘Don’t let the now destroy the future.’
A neat summary of Cesar’s perspective and by the end of this chaotic saga, I wondered why bother with all the other madness thrown into the storyline, a madness that felt like an experiment that got out of control, then exploded. Anyway.
Alongside this ongoing dispute with the mayor is the family dynamics of a jealous cousin, Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf), forever trying to take down Cesar, socialite-turned-visionary, daughter to the mayor, Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel), and the complicated relationship of spurned lover and journalist, Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), who ends up marrying Cesar’s uncle, Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight).
Not forgetting Cesar’s mother, Constance Crassus Catilina (Talia Shire) who pulls away her hand from Cesar after he kisses it because, ‘it hurts.’
Amongst the family dramas, love triangles and marriage – there’s a whole lot of silly. Not funny. Silly.
Like the ‘Dingbat News’.
Like a young girl famous and singing for donations in the Colosseum to remain a virgin until marriage.
Then flashes to undies for sale with her image on the front.
The chaotic that creates an unsettled feeling throughout the film is amplified by a soundtrack that shifts from court music with trumpets, to orchestral classical, to jazz, all within the same scene.
The first half of the film felt distant, like watching a performance instead of being absorbed into the film.
Coppola experiments, his vision shown by darkening the screen to a spotlight to pull the audience into a moment (well, that device drew the focus into the scene), splicing the screen, to using the cinema as part of the film, literally. Someone in the audience set up a podium, facing the screen to then ask Cesar a question.
After this moment, the film conversely, felt more like a movie rather than a performance.
But for me, this fable, literary debacle didn’t sell – the silly and the pretentious just made the sometimes poignant moments weird:
‘You can see right through me’
Only those in a nightmare are capable of praising the moonlight.’
I found the film so ridiculous that if Cesar woke up at the end of a dream, a nightmare, that might have been a better ending.
Megalopolis – it’s as pretentious as it sounds.
