Megalopolis review: Francis Ford Coppola's plea for the future lacks humanity
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Francis Ford Coppola is already likening Megalopolis to one of his other movies that was received divisively when it first premiered, Apocalypse Now, as a number of critics wrote negatively about the movie now widely considered a classic (including by What to Watch, as it is on our 100 best movies of all time). But having seen Megalopolis for myself, I have to fall in the camp that Megalopolis is not on par with Coppola's best, perhaps not even among his middle of the road movies.
It's not for lack of ambition. Coppola takes a massive swing with Megalopolis and creates a visually stunning world. He is also very clear in what he is saying with this movie — that it is an allegory to our current society and a warning that if we do not change our ways and have a serious debate about what we want our future to be we could collapse like the Roman empire. The main problem with Megalopolis is that the world Coppola creates and the characters he inhabits it with offers no connection for the audience. It's all message and no story, which does not make for the most engaging viewing experience.
Megalopolis takes place in the city of New Rome (an alternate version of New York). It is a city in decline with two very different visions of how to fix it: one is Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who wants to focus on the now, and the brilliant but controversial architect Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), who dreams of creating a new kind of city that can be a utopia for people. Around them are different power players and elites that want to do what is best for themselves, as well as Cicero's daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), who is torn between her father and her budding romance with Cesar. The movie also stars Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Kathryn Hunter, Grace VanderWaal, Chloe Fineman and Dustin Hoffman.
The easiest defense of Megalopolis is that it is literally billed as a fable (its full title is Megalopolis: A Fable). Fables are stories specifically meant to convey a moral, where perhaps characters can be less grounded as they are primarily there to drive home the message. The problem is fables are also typically short. But at two hours and 18 minutes, Megalopolis is not short and it unfortunately doesn't help audiences make like things are moving along at a faster clip.
The story is paper thin, its characters unrelatable and its dialogue at times cringey. Coppola can call it a fable in order to give him some leeway with all this and the actors' big, bombastic performances, but at the end of the day there is nothing for an audience to latch onto. The Godfather has been described as a story about the American dream and a Shakespearean-like family tragedy; Apocalypse Now was a psychological descent into madness that wanted to capture the feeling of the Vietnam War. But they still had stories and characters that we could follow and care about. Coppola doesn't achieve either of those key factors in Megalopolis.
To its credit, the movie is visually stunning and we see the obvious parallels between Coppola's world and our own. But as incredible as Megalopolis is too look at and as worthy a message as it is — that we should not only look to the now but consider the future and how we can improve humanity for future generations — that is not enough to save the movie from being an ultimately unsatisfying entry from a revered filmmaker.
Coppola can dream of the future for this movie and how it will be received, and perhaps one day he will be proven right. But now, in my eyes, Megalopolis is a major disappointment.
Megalopolis releases exclusively in movie theaters on September 27.
