Mucking with Movies: ‘Megalopolis’
A Generational Swan Song

Jack Simon/Courtesy photo
Perhaps never in cinematic history has there ever been a more inexplicable, impenetrable, batty piece of cannon fodder than “Megalopolis.” Maybe a David Lynch film here or a Werner Hertzog there, but you usually had the feeling those two were purposely creating a force field around their movies to get their audiences to watch from the outside in. I get no such feeling from Francis Ford Coppola; it seems more that he was on a kamikaze mission to destroy any sense of the middling boredom that modern-day filmmaking finds itself in. With “Megalopolis,” Coppola looks around at this era of young burgeoning filmmakers, your Greta Gerwig’s, your Ryan Coogler’s, your Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s, saw them all standing around glad-handling and resting on laurels and fired a bazooka straight into the middle of the circle.
This is not to say that “Megalopolis” is a good film because it’s not. But it is. But it’s also really, really not. Most of the time in this column, I have to stretch out some haughty jokes or squeeze all the juice I possibly can from the one-note films I go to see to hit my word count, but there’s so much to talk about here. We could discuss the acting, where it seems like Coppola was directing the ensemble cast to channel some pre-Brando era performing that leans more toward theater than performing for the camera, the cyberpunk surrealism meets Ancient Rome aesthetic, or the fact that it feels like it was written by Phillip K. Dick and Hunter Thompson as a gag at the end of a long awful speed trip. Some of these may seem like a compliment, but they are not.
“Megalopolis” has an ideal, both in the literal sense that the protagonist Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) is on an insatiable quest to create an eternal utopia and in the meta sense that artistically it is striving for high-art greatness that it just cannot quite grasp. It never stops trying, never settles for something less, seemingly always keeping in mind Oscar Wilde’s quote, “Progress is keeping sight of utopia.” It is that pursuit that makes the film so rewarding to sit through.
The charm wears off about two-thirds of the way through, where I stop giggling at the ludicrous and start gritting my teeth to bear my way through it. Coincidentally, it is also when the film’s scope shrinks to a more mundane, family drama-driven narrative that forces my interest to wane. When it tries to grasp with humility and deal with a grounded humanity, the film’s glaring weaknesses become stark. It is there where you realize you haven’t understood any of the plot development and start wondering where in the world did Dustin Hopper go? Did he ever need to be in this film at all? And then another title card is spliced in with airy quotes about the rise and fall of Empires, and it becomes impossible to ignore the fact that they look like they were ripped straight out of a middle schooler’s iMovie project. It is indubitably polarizing, but nobody will feel that their time was wasted while watching.
I often talk about the rules of a film, and whether or not a director can follow through on them as the rubric for quality, Coppola found a loophole by just not having any rules. The first five minutes are so incredibly overstuffed the expectation is set. The bar has been lowered on the roller coaster, and you’re just hoping the operator is paying enough attention that you’re not pitched off a cliff. I was ultimately left with two heavy takeaways: Coppola is hosting a post-modern bash of apathetic apoplectic consumerism, playing the flute as Rome burns if you will, while simultaneously landing with an urge to consider how young of a species we are. How much potential do we have to be rotten or to be fruitful?
“Megalopolis” is an old man’s fleeting dream to spend his vast fortune finally satisfying the itch he could never scratch. The quality is almost beside the point; it is a nine-figure performance art. Coppola has nothing left to prove; he made a handful of the most critically acclaimed flicks ever made, and mucked off to his vineyard to ferment grapes for oodles and oodles of cash while raising two talented kids. Of course, “Megalopolis” is insane, it should be! It’s an artist without restraint, a creature thought to have been extinct. I loathe to give it a score, but I have to, as it is my job.
Critic Score: 6.9/10
Jack Simon is a mogul coach and writer/director who enjoys eating food he can’t afford, traveling to places out of his budget, and creating art about skiing, eating, and traveling while broke. Check out his website jacksimonmakes.com to see his Jack’s Jitney travelogue series. You can email him at jackdocsimon@gmail.com for inquiries of any type.
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