The Big Picture

Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis is a passion project lacking substance.
Rather than feel subverise in any meaningful way, the whole thing is more stodgy and repetitive.
It’s an expansive film about a man building a futuristic city, but both are more intriguing in theory than in execution.

Well, he did it. Francis Ford Coppola made Megalopolis. After many decades, the passion project to end all passion projects has arrived. It reportedly was a mess of a production, but that was also the case for Apocalypse Now. The difference is that film will go down as one of the most significant works of cinema ever made whereas this will not. In the abstract, one can be somewhat glad that something like this exists and that we all get to see what it was that Coppola was cooking for decades. The trouble is, in execution, it’s a meandering “fable” (as the opening title card calls it) that plays more as a farce. As for who the joke is really on and how intentional it all is, well that depends on what you go to the movies for. If it’s to see Adam Driver vacillating between sleepwalking and shouting his way through scenes or Jon Voight making one of the most bizarre dick jokes ever put to screen, then this will be a wonderful time. If you’re looking for something that doesn’t just throw a bunch of different ideas at the screen to see what sticks, well strap yourself in for a film that does that for over two hours.

At its premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, the room initially was filled with a hushed anticipation that soon turned to more frequently perplexed amusement and laughter. Yes, someone did come out on stage to speak directly to Driver in one scene. One wonders what this will look like in theaters and if underpaid ushers will be expected to step to the front to replicate this. Of course, this doesn’t really matter as it doesn’t actually serve the scene in any sort of interesting way and is only one of the fundamental problems at the core of the film. One is tempted to compare it to Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales, which also premiered at the festival in 2006, but that has gone through at least some sort of reevaluation since being dismissed on release. There may be such a future for Megalopolis, but it’s hard to see that being likely anytime soon. Even with all the ideas that are bouncing around, there is just not enough meat on the bone to chew on. Films like The Godfather, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now will always be remembered as some of the greatest ever made, but this will not be remembered among Coppola’s best work. But hey, at least Aubrey Plaza is having fun.

What Is ‘Megalopolis’ About?

At its most basic, the film is about a man building a city in what is called New Rome. Oh yeah, that’s going to be a thing the film does multiple times in terms of half-heartedly comparing the decline of modern society to the past. Caesar Catalina (Driver) is an architect with big ideas and, as he does every so often, the ability to stop time. This is something that we see in the film’s striking opening scene, and it instantly raises our intrigue as we see him come perilously close to the edge of a building, capturing a sense of vertigo with the ground stretching out below him. Unfortunately, whatever intrigue one could have took a nosedive.

Caesar, meanwhile, stays up top where he begins to go about making his futuristic sci-fi city. Standing in his way is Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who believes that this ambitious utopia will become a dystopia. Complicating matters is that the mayor’s daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), soon becomes part of Caesar’s life and plans. Lurking in the shadows are various other power players in the city, such as the politically ambitious asshole Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf) and the conniving television reporter Wow Platinum (Plaza), that will all become part of this attempted epic. You’ll forget about most by the time it’s over.

While this is what the film is about in a literal sense, all of these conflicts prove largely incidental. Instead, as we get told over and over again, Megalopolis is a film about a society falling. This usually takes the form of monologues from Laurence Fishburne’s Fundi Romaine, Caesar’s driver who also seems to be his sole friend, that are as superficial as they are silly. Indeed, silliness is the prevailing feeling one gets from the film. There are some bits that lean into this with an earned absurdity occasionally hitting home in a ridiculous gladiatorial scene or a bizarre architecture team-building montage scene that goes on for way too long.

‘Megalopolis’ Is Mostly a Mess

On the whole, most of it stumbles and falls into humor. The acting of those like LaBeouf is certainly meant to be comical, but every choice he made is so broad that it cements it as a career-worst performance. One could generously say that with corruption and greed everywhere in this world, as well as our own, that dark absurdity is just part of the fabric of the tapestry being woven. However, the film just feels like it’s going back and forth over the same section without building anything out. There is a catastrophe that seems to mark a turning point in the film, but it feels like it passes so quickly that it could have been edited in at any time. Rarely do the characters talk about it or seem like it’s impacted their lives as all of them just carry out a lot of circular conversations in rooms that go nowhere and mean nothing.

The sole person to remain unscathed from this is Emmanuel. She manages to give some painfully shaky scenes the stability that they desperately need. A standout scene comes when she and Driver’s characters stand above the city on beams, discussing time together. The unfortunate thing is that it also marks the point where she fades into the background, going from being someone who felt like she was almost the film’s protagonist to suddenly feeling like a footnote. The romance we are meant to believe they have relies on small flashes of passion and Emmanuel’s charisma that get buried under Coppola’s many ideas.

This is a film that goes for breadth over depth, seemingly trying to be about everything only to end up being about nothing. Perhaps we’re meant to see Caesar, a misunderstood genius who just wants to make the world a better place, as a stand-in for Coppola himself. While this is the most sincere of interpretations, it’s also the most uninteresting and egotistical. Then maybe it’s that Caesar is a self-critical takedown of “great men” who, despite all their supposed good intentions, are defined by arrogance and avarice. There is something more interesting to this, but Coppola doesn’t put in nearly the thought to pull this off. The film is like a Rorschach test where everything is a stretch and nothing has any substance to it.

‘Megalopolis’ Isn’t a Total Disaser

With all this being said, the film is watchable. In fact, the competency of the whole thing ends up cutting both ways. On the one hand, you’re often watching fairly standard scenes play out with a handful of actors who’ve done great work before while attempting to do so here. You’re not watching the film come apart as much as it is just carrying on in a repetitive register. On the other hand, there is something that feels more stodgy than subversive the longer it goes on. This is a film that could have been alienating and challenging, pushing us either on a formal or thematic level. Instead, it doesn’t come close to doing either.

Say what you will about the aforementioned Southland Tales, there were big swings that had some passion behind them. Coppola is similarly going for a big swing, but in a way that feels off-balance rather than confident. The ending is where it’s most successful, but even what could be a dark closing punchline gets undercut by us getting beaten over the head by yet another superficial interjection. Much like the city being built in the film, it’s all more interesting in theory than it ever is in actuality. Now that we will all have the chance to take it in for ourselves, the greatest revelation is that there just isn’t that much to see.

Megalopolis (2024) REVIEWWhile it’s nice to see him complete his passion project, Megalopolis will be not be remembered among Francis Ford Coppola best films.ProsThe film is competent enough to be watchable. ConsThere aren’t enough big swings that have the confidence behind them to be truly challenging and subversive.The film mostly stumbles into accidental humor rather than be truly absurd enough to work.In the end, the film is like the building being built: interesting in theory though not in execution.

Megalopolis had its World Premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.