Megalopolis: When A Genius Overstays Their Welcome
With Megalopolis, the genius behind the greatest films of the 1970s has lost his touch.
I don't typically write movie reviews; nobody likes a critic - so I will not consider this a film review, just a collection of thoughts about a movie event that we are not talking enough about. When I think about my top 10 films ever, about half the directors are still alive: Martin Scorsese, Barry Jenkins, Paul Thomas Anderson (I wrote the list in 2020 and There Will Be Blood was 10 on the list. If I wrote this list again today, I'd substitute it for something I've grown to love more), Hayao Miyazaki and Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola is special to me. We know him as the director of The Godfather trilogy, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now, a film that has come to define genius and excellence on screen for me. There are few films I believe are perfect - shot for shot, I wouldn't change a thing, yet Apocalypse Now is one of the 5-10 more perfect films I've ever seen.
I'm writing this "film brain dump" within hours of seeing Megalopolis, the passion project from one of the most gifted filmmakers ever. I got a warning for talking from the good people at the Alamo Drafthouse about halfway through the movie, but I do not regret talking during the film. I had so much to say in real-time as it was happening, I wanted to talk more. So, I might as well start diving into these mixed feelings!
The film lost me pretty quickly when Shia Labeouf came on screen and gave a terrible line delivery in the first 10 minutes. In fact, most lines by most actors are delivered poorly. I don't understand how so many talented actors give such terrible performances. I felt like I was watching a poor Shakespeare adaptation of Julius Ceasar at a high school. The script feels juvenile. When I was 18-19 and I began having ambitions to be a writer and I believed I was so "tortured" I would have written similar lines that Coppola's actors speak in this film. Adam Driver's character even goes to far to choppily repeat the famous "to be or not to be" soliloquy from Hamlet at one point in the film. In a clip going around the internet, Adam Driver gives sass while telling Nathalie Emmanuel's character to "go back to the club," which is unironically hilarious, like the actors themselves aren't taking the film too seriously. This is the same director that gave us famous likes like "I'll give him an offer he can't refuse," "I love the smell of napalm in the morning," "Terminate with extreme prejudice," "leave the gun, take the cannoli." To see his writing fall off so so much is a bit sad to see.
The Roman motifs that coat this film with a thick layer of paint feel heavy-handed, such as calling New York City "New Rome," and all of the character names being synonmous with the Roman Empire (Adam Driver as Cesar Catalina, Nathalie Emmanuel as Julia Cicero, Shia LaBeouf as Clodio Pulcher, and Laurence Fishburne as Fundi Romaine) and even Madison Square Garden being remade into a modern version of the Roman Colosseum hits the audiance over the head with the notion that America - and New York City specifically - is a dying empire. I've never liked when a director spoon-feeds the audience the themes of the movie and assumes that we're stupid. Directors must assume their audiences to be smart. Media literacy isn’t in a great place right now, but directors can never be too on the nose with their thematic content. There are more clever ways to get the points across!
I was left with so many questions by the end of the film. Why did Adam Driver's character need to have magic powers? Like why was he a magician? He didn't need to stop time for anything. The film didn't benefit off of Driver's character being able to stop time and see into the future. He also never used his powers to his advantage. We don’t know how he got his powers, and why no one else in the film has them. Also, I don't understand why he was such a big celebrity. He's an architect. Most architects are not celebrities and outside of the micro-niches of these design spaces, would not be recognizable in public, let alone be the focal point of an entire city. Also, if Coppola was going to go to such lengths to create a NYC that isn't really NYC, why include a real American flag? A confederate flag? A Swastika? I literal shot of Hitler in the film? A sign that says "Make Rome Great Again?" The whole point of fictionalizing the setting should be to veer off from reality.
Why did a Soviet satellite crash into the fictionalized version of Manhattan, creating an unspeakable tragedy where the Twin Towers once stood, making the movie both about the Cold War and 9/11 all of a sudden? There are too many themes and ideas to keep track of. I don't believe you can successfully make a movie about capital-s society. There is simply too much to keep track of, which makes the movie feel clunky. It needed to be more targeted in its approach. There are too many speeches about the nature of love, time, the ideas of utopia, and how a person should live, that by the end of the movie you're so overstimulated and disoriented that you come away with a vague notion of what the movie was about, but ultimately decide it's a movie concurrently about everything and nothing. It’s a long rambling, preachy mess that ultimately doesn’t say too much.
On the other hand, it's not all bad. Sure, it's a disaster, but it is a very original idea and included several elements that I had never seen in a movie before. The shot where the Soviet satellite came hurdling towards New Rome and the silhouettes of horrified citizens on the streets flashed on the city skyscrapers was admittedly a cool shot. The statues coming to life and reflecting moods of the poverty they see around them is new and interesting. Some of the costumes were very decadent and at times the film is very visually stimulating and appealing. And most of all, it is a movie that was made with good intentions and sought to give moral advice. It's a film about conflicting beliefs, between conservatism and progressivism and what is necessary to move people forward to a more prosperous future. There's themes of resisting nationalism and it's about letting go of greed and building a society based on love in order to reach a utopia. Earlier this year I watched Yorgos Lanthimos' new film Kinds of Kindness, which is perhaps, without hyperbole, the worst film I've ever seen. I don't care that people love Yorgos because he's different & quirky, the film was terrible because there was no message. It was obscenity for the sake of obscenity, and oftentimes intentionally offensive. At least Megalopolis in all of its fiasco had heart in mind.
Coppola clearly wanted to make a film about anti-conservatism, yet includes Shia Labeouf and Jon Voigt. The former has been more or less “canceled” by the public for his abuse of ex-girlfriend FKA Twigs, while the later, who starred in MIDNIGHT COWBOY, possibly the most subversive Best Picture winner of all time, of all things, is one of Trump's most famous supporters. Before the film released, he was on the record saying he didn't want the film to be a "woke Hollywood production." Coppola sees himself as a god amongst filmmakers, one who can transcend the current cultural moment, yet the decision to make an anti-conservative film while displaying famously problematic men feels antithetical to his theme.
When an athlete reaches an age where his legs don't work as good as they used to or they can't pitch, shoot, throw footballs, etc.. like they could when they were younger, they retire. It's painful watching your favorite athletes get older and retire because, in a way, its symbolic of your own getting older. Artists don't have to go through this because they can continue to create art in their old age. The late Cormac McCarthy published his last two novels at the age of 89, and they were terrific. Four Tet is almost 50 and still has the ability to create something beautiful. A lot of artists can still work as they age. The question is whether or not they still should. I've had several conversations with my brother on the nature of artists and how they need to know when to hang it up. Some of the most prominent rappers of a previous generations - guys whos music I really love like Jay-Z and Nas - no longer have the same charm that they did when they were young. Nas is a great example because he got his start rapping about his tough upbringing in Queensbridge, New York. His music had edge to it - it was real street poetry. Now that he's been rich for longer than he's been poor, he doesn't have the same experiences to talk about that made him such a good rapper to begin with and the music has suffered as a result. It doesn’t have the same heart. With Coppola, I can see there is genius in him by watching Megalopolis, even if it is long gone. There are times where I can't believe that Megalopolis and The Conversation are made by the same person. Coppola has seen himself go from the boy wonder, who went on a magical cinderella run of al-time great films in the 1970s to an aging artists who still needs to give us his ideas, at the risk of appearing crazy. He's the human embodiment of the "the party ended an hour ago and he's still here” meme.
In the end, Megalopolis is a mess, a big, beautiful mess, but ultimately I respect it. The film reads as it is intended: a passion project. It's a passion project in every definition of the word. Coppola is someone who has cemented his name in the cinematic hall of fame. His run in the 1970s is matched only by a select few (Kubrick, Scorsese, Ozu, Varda are names that come to mind), and if he has never made another film after Apocalypse Now, he'd still be regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. To want to create a film this ambitious, at this scale, at his age requires the artist to be powered by demons. At 85 years old, Coppola sees the sand slowly running out of the hour glass and he has so much to say that he needed to say it all in this one last film. The film feels jumbled and messy because he's trying to say so much in so little time (the film runs 2h18m), but it's because he knows he will most likely not create another film that he feels like all of his ideas, philosophical, visual, cinematic, all had to come out in this one last work.
Wanting to create a film of this magnitude in your mid-80s is impressive, but it’s even more remarkable to put up $120M of your own money to make it come to life. Liquidating a substantial portion of your fortune because you believe so much in your vision is admirable even if the end result is a disaster, but I have no choice but to respect it. The critics will pan it. The audience will mock it. But Coppola made the film that was 40 years in the making, and we will not be able to take it away from him.
If you ask a random person on the street what the greatest film of all time is, they will most likely say The Godfather. If you ask many film nerds what their greatest films of all time are, they will most likely include Apocalypse Now. To have 2-3 enteries in the conversation of the best movie ever is called genius, but to include Megalopolis, one of film's biggest disaster, is called range. He's reached teh highest peaks, and seen the lowest valleys - making him one of the only artists who has seen both ends of the spectrum.
I thought Megalopolis was a tough watch. It's a mess of a movie that tries to do way too much, which makes the film feel bloated. Is it self indulgent? Sure, but what epic from a big director isn't? Heaven's Gate, Babylon, and The Revenant are all self-indulgent films that also happen to be great films. That doesn't make it bad, but in Megalopolis case, it's a bad movie, with some redeemable qualities. I'll have to watch it again, maybe a few more times, to get my thoughts hammered out, but after just watching it a few hours ago, my mind is still spinning and I needed to get all of my thoughts out on paper. At the end of the movie, I respected and pitied Coppola, a crazed artists whos best days are behind him. He may be leaving a big mess in his wake and we all need to pick up the pieces, but he did make the movie and it's going to be part of the film cannon forever. There are no winners and losers here, opposed to what the internet wants to make you believe, but the fact that so many of us bought the ticket, and subsequently had to take the ride, may make Coppola out to be in the lead.
Peace and Love