A Filmmaker's Apocalypse: Megalopolis is a Fascinating Disaster

Lionsgate

1.5/4 stars

Has there ever been a more ambitious filmmaker than Francis Ford Coppola? The rebel who tried to conquer Hollywood has always chased seemingly impossible ambitions and made films on his terms. Sometimes that resulted in Apocalypse Now; sometimes One from the Heart, but his films were always uniquely his. This still holds true with his four-decades-in-the-making passion project, Megalopolis, which contains all of Coppola's best and worst qualities. The film is convoluted, bombastic, overproduced, and absolutely fascinating. It's a failure to be sure, but I can't help but love films that swing for the fences ... even if it's a swing and a miss.

Set in the fantastical city of New Rome, we follow Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), a brilliant architect who plans to build a utopian city with a substance he invented called "megalon." This city could be the start of an era of peace and prosperity, but those within New Rome's government wish to keep the status quo and members of Cesar's extended family may resort to violence to stop his dream.

What started as a kind of Marxist retelling of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead in the admittedly brilliant original script has devolved into a mess of subplots that get introduced and dropped in the same scene and twists that seem to go nowhere. It feels like Coppola is throwing every idea and dream he ever had into this film and none of it coalesces. That said, it is beautiful to look at and great ambition is always admirable. It's hard to recommend a film like Megalopolis but I'm happy auteurist disasters on this scale can still be made. 

Written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola // Starring Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Jason Schwartzman, Talia Shire, Grace VanderWaal, Laurence Fishburne, Kathyrn Hunter, James Remar, D.B. Sweeney, Balthazar Getty, and Dustin Hoffman // 138 minutes // Lionsgate // Rated R