Megalopolis: Movie Review

Cast: Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel, Giancarlo Esposito, Shia LaBeouf, Aubrey Plaza, Dustin Hoffman 
Director: Francis Ford Coppola

It's perhaps fitting that the setting of Francis Ford Coppola's passion project is set in the world of New Rome City (a city that looks suspiciously like New York).

With its Roman-named cast and a myriad of Shakespearean speeches tossed out against the backdrop of $120 million worth of financing, there's the same kind of folly that affected parts of the Roman empire under the watch of Nero.

Adam Driver is Caesar Catalina, an idealist who favours a future Utopia and who has pioneered a material that will shape it. But opposed to his ideas is the current Mayor of New Rome City, Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) - and thrust in the middle of the conflict is his daughter Julia Cicero (a mesmerising Nathalie Emmanuel), who finds her loyalties tested - and her faith rattled.

Swirling around all of this are various subplot that never quite coalesce - a power-hungry reporter (Plaza, in campy, vampy mode): a sneering banker (Voight, channelling his infamous Anaconda-level acting), a troublemaking cousin (LaBeouf, watchable until he's not) - and a myriad of big name bit players.

When it works, Megalopolis is audacious.

A mantra runs through one section: "When we leap into the unknown, we prove that we are free", something that Coppola thrives by throughout. There are moments here when it's patently obvious the director is freewheeling with his actors, and to be frank, it's glorious to watch, to get simply carried away in the visuals of what's playing out.

But then there are many moments when much of Megalopolis feels like it's in desperate need of an expeditious edit or some kind of stronger adherence to some semblance of a plot. What story there is is light in extremis, relying on a MacGuffin, the principles of which are to be adhered to, but whose very existence is shrouded in too much mystery to feel like an importance.

A planned interactive moment with the audience is a nice touch, but its execution is fumbled, a brutally cut in scene that has little to no context to afford it resonance. 

Megalopolis is largely a muddled movie that feels like a folly writ large, and yet, it will be lauded for its existence. At its heart, it's a love story, plain and simple, a Romeo and Juliet tale writ on a larger canvas with tantalising hints of what it could be, and frustrated narratives which hold it back.

It will be debated, scorned, mocked and praised in equal measure - but in truth, it feels like a crushing disappointment that no one reined in its director and tightened the edges. While it cries out to be seen on the biggest screen possible, it does also require nerves of steel and patience to endure its pomposity.

Incredible, infuriating and occasionally inspiring, Megalopolis (aka Megaflopolis) does what all good cinema should - it provokes something. It's just that the something is question is quite potentially ennui among the excess.