Review: Megalopolis
If You Can't See A Better Future, Build One.
INTRODUCTION
This is a quick review of the newly released film Megalopolis. Keep in mind this is but one of the many movies I watch every year, and that whatever initial grade I come up for this film could change for better or worse with time. To better keep up to date with both my thoughts on other movies and if my feelings on this film changed, follow me on Letterboxd.
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THE PLOT
Via Letterboxd: Genius artist Cesar Catilina seeks to leap the City of New Rome into a utopian, idealistic future, while his opposition, Mayor Franklyn Cicero, remains committed to a regressive status quo, perpetuating greed, special interests, and partisan warfare. Torn between them is socialite Julia Cicero, the mayor’s daughter, whose love for Cesar has divided her loyalties, forcing her to discover what she truly believes humanity deserves.
QUICK REVIEW
One of the most exciting developments in the film industry over the last couple years has been the fact that Francis Ford Coppola, THE Francis Ford Coppola who gave us some of the most important movies in the medium’s history, was producing a brand new film. And not just any new film, but a movie that he has sought to make for decades now to the point it’s almost become an urban legend; a grand scale film of epic proportions with grand ideas and a big cast that would be a new magnum opus in his catalog of films. And to make things more interesting, it’d be a project almost universally financed by him - a show of ballsy genius in spending your own money to create a piece of art that you believe in.
This very well could end up being Coppola’s final directed film. Its dedicated to his recently departed wife, and I have the utmost respect for the swing he took to make this a reality against many odds. Like Kevin Costner’s current ongoing four-film project with Horizon: An American Saga, Coppola is giving me some inspiration to never give up on that piece of art you want to get out to the world. And there is something refreshing in seeing an auteur making something without some big studio head messing with their vision. It gives me seventies-era cinema vibes.
But as much respect as I have for the ballsiness displayed by the iconic director to make this vision of his a reality, the harsh reality is that this will ultimately end up one of his most divisive and unpopular films ever. When it comes to how low this movie will rank in his catalog, this will rival Jack, a family nineties film of his that has been derided as perhaps his worst ever. Because for all the great concepts in this, for as impressive a cast as it holds, for all the artistic gamble, the final product is a mess of a movie that feels like the epitome of how a great film on paper can become a complete disaster.
There is clearly a longer cut out there of Megalopolis, because the editing of this film is so obviously chopped apart that there’s moments my jaw dropped at how rushed certain character arcs played out during what should have been more impactful scenes. There’s random bits of information sprinkled into scenes in ways that feel forced, and characters suddenly pop up with little introduction. There’s a death-reveal in this movie that made me almost think I had imagined it in my head given how rushed over it was. There’s scenes where I feel like information is missing as well. It’s a movie that was so clearly hurt by what was really bad editing work. If the movie needed to be an hour longer or even divided into two parts, I think it would have helped the the storytelling immensely.
The movie’s production design can be beautiful at times, though there are some obvious green screen moments. The film’s score is okay but easily forgettable. The direction is honestly subpar from a man who has done some of the greatest direction work in the industry. And the dialogue is badly in need of several new drafts. And then we get to the issue of the inconsistent acting…
This is an incredibly impressive ensemble, featuring: Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel, Giancarlo Esposito, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Jason Schwartzman, Talia Shire, Grace VanderWaal, Laurence Fishburne, Kathryn Hunter, Dustin Hoffman, among others. And for as incredible an ensemble as this is on paper - as a collective it falls flat. A lot of people involved in this deserved better, because clearly there were moments that Coppola didn’t allow them more takes to nail the scenes and line deliveries. Thus the movie produces some of the more mediocre to downright bad performances we’ve seen from a lot of the players involved. The standout, if anyone, to me, was Aubrey Plaza as a horny, femme-fatale type of gold digger - mainly cause Plaza seem to get the tone of the movie more consistently than most of her castmates seemed to. The rest of the cast, as I already said, are pretty sub-standard including Adam Driver who keeps going in and out on how eccentric to play his character.
There are clearly plays at certain themes and ideas here in equating the futuristic society in this film to that of Rome. This is supposed to be, as the film implies, a fable that warns about the excessiveness of society weakening foundations and allowing for bad actors to take charge. It’s an interesting idea! Especially given the near 50/50 chance right now that we end up with the return of one of the ultimate bad actors in our country’s history to the White House. But unfortunately the movie’s errors make its ambitions collapse onto itself.
Megalopolis needs to be longer, needs to be edited better, needs a director/writer that allowed more drafts to his script, needs better acting, more takes, and crisper line deliveries than what it gets from its ensemble, and it needed better cohesion. Had it had all those things, we could be talking about a truly special movie. Instead I think this film will go down as one a few argue for being misunderstood, and most (including me) call an unmitigated disaster that will poke a hole in Coppola’s legacy - and this is before bringing up the onset scandals involving sexual harassment claims against Coppola, and the inclusion of controversial actors with their own scandals.
I have to give Megalopolis an awful grade of D+ at first glance. This is without a shadow of a doubt, one of the all-time flops from a director who has given us much superior material. If The Godfather or Apocalypse Now go down as masterpieces of the artform of film, Megalopolis will go down as mediocre filmmaking letting down an admirable artistic gamble. Maybe one day the better version of this movie will be made, but I don’t believe Francis Ford Coppola will be the director who brings that version to life.
INITIAL GRADING
