C-Directed by Francis Ford Coppola Starring Adam Driver Review by Jon Kissel |  |
If a director makes three or four of the greatest American movies, he can do whatever he wants. For Francis Ford Coppola, that’s meant toiling in his own shadow, never coming anywhere near the quality of his several masterpieces. He’s also built a filmmaking dynasty and founded a wine empire, the latter of which enabled him to produce and direct what will likely be his final film. Megalopolis has been in the works since the 70’s, when Coppola saw the parallels between the Cataline Conspiracy of the Roman Republic and contemporary America. Though that historic incident has been reconsidered by historians in the time Megalopolis was on Coppola’s mind, his film loosely about it hasn’t undergone the same level of reexamination. The combination of Coppola’s inability to rediscover the magic of his 70’s output and the surface-level examination of both Roman history and present-day America makes Megalopolis a mess of such grandeur that it’s impossible to predict what will happen next. This nine-figure stream-of-consciousness is worth watching if only for its head-scratching quality, and the unique combination of Coppola’s soft-brained earnestness and therapized self-examination.
Adam Driver stars as Coppola stand-in Cesar Catalina, a brilliant visionary and representative of the great man theory of history. His philandering foibles and chemical overconsumption are nothing in the face of his architectural and scientific brilliance. Hounded by the corrupt mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) as an impractical dreamer, Catalina is a Randian hero, put upon by the insecurities of lesser men. Also, he has the ability to stop time and he’s discovered a super-metal called Megalon. Coppola piles on with subplots like Catalina’s controversial affairs with a pop star, a financial reporter named Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), and Cicero’s daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanual), the machinations of the city’s richest man/Catalina’s uncle who also has a big ol’ dick (Jon Voight), and the jealousies of Catalina’s cousin (Shia LaBeouf). After a chunk of the city is destroyed, the main argument of the film emerges over what should be built to replace it. Cicero wants a tax revenue-generating casino, but Catalina has big dreams for a Megalon-infused utopia that will inspire the downtrodden masses.
It's that discussion between art and commerce that Coppola seems most interested in, and it’s one that informs the production of the movie. He self-financed the film with proceeds from his winery, transforming his own income into art that he hoped would inspire moviegoers. What he didn’t consider is that perhaps someone with access to huge sums of money would lose the ability to say anything interesting. The trope of speeches changing the world has infected Megalopolis, and Coppola has distilled Sorkin into the raw component parts. There’s no argument to be made when Catalina gets his many opportunities to speak to the public, only evocations of romantic ideals that devolve into yelling ‘Love’ over and over again. Imagery can cover for characters that speak while saying nothing, but this avenue of inspiration is just as empty. Coppola’s vision of Catalina’s city is golden moving sidewalks combined with the glimpses of the alien cities in Jeff Nichols’ Midnight Special. The sense of the characters in the film that are impressed or moved by any of this is that they’re an idiot, a conclusion that is decidedly not what Coppola intended. The distance between the film’s lofty aspirations and its poor execution is just sad for a director of Coppola’s stature.
That said, there are fun parts to Megalopolis. There’s a couple of ridiculous parental relationships, one between Catalina and his mother (Talia Shire) and another between Cicero and Julia. Both are deeply Italian and immediately recognizable from either Coppola’s biography or the Sopranos. Voight is having a blast playing a combination of Joe Biden and Sumner Redstone, and is given the gift of the film’s best line, a crass show-stopper in a film whose heart is walking around outside of its body. His partner in ham is Plaza, who’s spoken candidly about the improvisational and unstructured way the film was made. LaBeouf is a hideous presence, but Coppola cast him in the exact right role. It’s a repulsively magnetic performance from an actor I never want to see again, comparable to the impulse to open up and sniff a bottle of visibly-rotten milk. Driver gets out unblemished by the no-win scenario given to him, as there isn’t a person alive who could credibly portray the Catalina of Coppola’s imagining. It’s amusing to watch Driver give it his best effort.
Megalopolis must be seen to be believed. For all that boggles the mind, for every terrible choice that Coppola makes, for the depth of his political incoherence and offensive paternalism, it’s a stunner and not in a good way. There are bad films that a viewer walks out of and is furious at how their time has been wasted. This isn’t that. Coppola could’ve sat on his fortune and spread it out amongst his heirs, contributing to the rancid aristocracy of elites that led to the downfall of the Roman republic and might as well lead to America’s collapse. Instead, he spread it out over the Georgia filmmaking industry, putting it in the pockets of crew members and local restaurants and VFX artists. I’m sure Roman and Sofia and Gia and Nic will get something, too, but if Megalopolis needs to be thought of as an inheritance tax with a hilarious boner joke, that’s not the worst thing in the world. C-
It's that discussion between art and commerce that Coppola seems most interested in, and it’s one that informs the production of the movie. He self-financed the film with proceeds from his winery, transforming his own income into art that he hoped would inspire moviegoers. What he didn’t consider is that perhaps someone with access to huge sums of money would lose the ability to say anything interesting. The trope of speeches changing the world has infected Megalopolis, and Coppola has distilled Sorkin into the raw component parts. There’s no argument to be made when Catalina gets his many opportunities to speak to the public, only evocations of romantic ideals that devolve into yelling ‘Love’ over and over again. Imagery can cover for characters that speak while saying nothing, but this avenue of inspiration is just as empty. Coppola’s vision of Catalina’s city is golden moving sidewalks combined with the glimpses of the alien cities in Jeff Nichols’ Midnight Special. The sense of the characters in the film that are impressed or moved by any of this is that they’re an idiot, a conclusion that is decidedly not what Coppola intended. The distance between the film’s lofty aspirations and its poor execution is just sad for a director of Coppola’s stature.
That said, there are fun parts to Megalopolis. There’s a couple of ridiculous parental relationships, one between Catalina and his mother (Talia Shire) and another between Cicero and Julia. Both are deeply Italian and immediately recognizable from either Coppola’s biography or the Sopranos. Voight is having a blast playing a combination of Joe Biden and Sumner Redstone, and is given the gift of the film’s best line, a crass show-stopper in a film whose heart is walking around outside of its body. His partner in ham is Plaza, who’s spoken candidly about the improvisational and unstructured way the film was made. LaBeouf is a hideous presence, but Coppola cast him in the exact right role. It’s a repulsively magnetic performance from an actor I never want to see again, comparable to the impulse to open up and sniff a bottle of visibly-rotten milk. Driver gets out unblemished by the no-win scenario given to him, as there isn’t a person alive who could credibly portray the Catalina of Coppola’s imagining. It’s amusing to watch Driver give it his best effort.
Megalopolis must be seen to be believed. For all that boggles the mind, for every terrible choice that Coppola makes, for the depth of his political incoherence and offensive paternalism, it’s a stunner and not in a good way. There are bad films that a viewer walks out of and is furious at how their time has been wasted. This isn’t that. Coppola could’ve sat on his fortune and spread it out amongst his heirs, contributing to the rancid aristocracy of elites that led to the downfall of the Roman republic and might as well lead to America’s collapse. Instead, he spread it out over the Georgia filmmaking industry, putting it in the pockets of crew members and local restaurants and VFX artists. I’m sure Roman and Sofia and Gia and Nic will get something, too, but if Megalopolis needs to be thought of as an inheritance tax with a hilarious boner joke, that’s not the worst thing in the world. C-
RSS Feed