“Coppola makes his film like the Americans made war” writes Jean Baudrillard in 1981. “With the same immoderation, the same excess of means, the same monstrous candor … and the same success.”
It seems forty-five years on from Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), little seems to have changed. The latest instalment in an extensive filmography, Megalopolis (2024) seems to similarly incorporate the instruments and mechanisms of American imperialism and capitalism into its representation of them. Yet where the former consciously uses destruction, excess, and debauchery to produce a monumental reflection of its times, the latter engages in a confused, masturbatory performance of self-aggrandisation and pseudo-intellectualism.
If there were anyone to tackle the subject of the American Empire, it would be Coppola. As a director, his films have come to define American culture as much as they have reflected on and critiqued it. However, it seems where Coppola has previously toed the line between the representation and reality of violence, evil, and imperialism, Megalopolis overtly dives into the latter.
Cesar Catalina, played by Adam Driver, chairs the Design Authority and oversees the reconstruction of New Rome, a futuristic city built with a material aptly titled Megalon. With the power to stop time and control space, Catalina threatens the status quo established by Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) who is content with the state of his city. Of course, Cesar falls for Cicero’s daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) in a not-so-new take on Romeo and Juliet, further complicating his plans for a megalon-centric future.
Immediately we are introduced to a series of megalomaniacs comprising the political and economic elite of a futuristic city named New Rome. The filmic world is presented to us as an amalgamation of ancient roman and high modernist aesthetics, with a wardrobe department of Togas and Pin-stripe suits, and names varying from the overtly classical Cesar Catilina to the almost Pynchonesque Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza).
Milena Canonero’s quasi-Roman, quasi-contemporary costume design is one of the few elements that can escape criticism, elevating the aesthetic far more than the use of special effects. Similarly, the moving statues that appeared sporadically were intriguing to the eye, but like Jason Schwartzman were relegated to the background.
Beyond these basic elements of world building, the film attempts to overwhelm you at all times with a surge of culture signifiers and clashing aesthetics. At a certain point you give up trying to identify these varying symbols and let them wash over you, as glimpses of German expressionism, MTV music videos, and Luhrman-esque theatricality are all flashed within seconds of each other. To an extent this attempt at large-scale montage is one of the film’s few successes, the lack of continuity or coherence in style and ideology reflecting contemporary American society.
Yet this is where the film’s boons begin and end. What seems at first to have the promise of another American epic of Coppola’s — albeit much more visually experimental — quickly devolves into a series of attempts at saying something, without having anything to say. Dimensions of class and gender are thrown at the audience as an afterthought. To Coppola, clearly, the most interesting aspect of empire is the man who creates it: an angle already tirelessly explored in much more interesting ways.
Unfortunately, the poorly fleshed out narrative, clunky dialogue, random pacing and mismatched tone — the actors did not get the same memo — dragged down the film even further. Driver’s performance comes off as obnoxious and idiotic, which, while normally hilarious, is played straight here — tediously so — and at no point in this film are we pushed to think of Cesar as anything but a brilliant, tortured genius. At times Shakespeare and Dickens are invoked for no reason but to let the audience know that this man is smart and sensitive. At no point does Driver’s character become the target of criticism, let alone comedy.
It was difficult to escape the misogyny, whether intentional or not: the dead wife trope lives on, with the same shot repeated over and over again in a lacklustre attempt to feel sympathy for Cesar, while the inclusion of Grace Wanderwaal as Vesta seemed like out of another film.
The patriarchal struggle over Julia seemed a one-dimensional arc and unfortunately, the rivalry between Cesar and Cicero suffered.
Despite casting veteran actress Kathryn Hunter, the mother-daughter relationship was almost non-existent, Coppola missed the opportunity to make the most of this casting.
Instead, the film employs arch-conservative Jon Voight, and Shia LaBeouf — who is currently being sued for sexual battery and assault by an ex-partner — whom Coppola claims to have intentionally hired due to their “cancelled” status. What could have been an interesting albeit morally bankrupt creative choice — hiring vile men to play vile men, blurring reality and representation, somewhat similar to Apocalypse Now — becomes overtly dull and contemptible, with Coppolla citing his reasoning as not wanting to be “deemed some woke Hollywood production”. This is notwithstanding Variety’s allegations of Coppola “hugg[ing] and kiss[ing] female background actors participating in a party scene” which has resulted in multiple lawsuits.
Critical and commercial failure is not something new to Coppola, as evidenced in One From The Heart (1982), yet Megalopolis seems to reflect a more devastating failure, a failure on a moral and spiritual level. In the biography, The Path to Paradise: A Francis Ford Coppola (2023), author Sam Wasson stated that the first draft was written in 1984: an admission befitting this grandiose attempt at creating a science fiction epic.
Once again Coppola has attempted to achieve a meta-textual depiction of the American empire, yet without any serious critique to put forward to this reality, he merely replicates it: as such, the film devolves into a “succession of special effects” without meaning.
Anyone familiar with the making of Apocalypse Now (1979), or more specifically, Heart of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1991), will recognise Cesar’s chaotic dilemma for the reality that is Coppola’s artistic and personal life. Cesar is easily recognisable as a stand-in for Coppola, who both stake their lives on Megalopolis. The Design Authority functions as the filmic representation of his production company American Zoetrope, while the supporting characters contend with his moods and mania. As in the film, this company acts as an extension of Coppola’s immense cultural and economic capital, allowing him to abuse and exploit at will, and without consequence.
Coppola does not deny this, admitting, “When I was making Apocalypse Now, they said I was Kurtz. When I was making The Godfather, they said I was Michael. So maybe it’s my fate that my life is, in fact, being made by the films.”
Looking Coppola’s creation in the eye — as an extension of himself — the audience is pushed to question why he chose to fork over $120 million to build his own Megalopolis if this was the end result.
Besides the aesthetic, what exactly is Megalopolis? A vision of a new city? Slanted structures? Dreams come true? While Cesar might have the power to halt time, Coppola appears to have only halted himself, while the world, fed-up with the exploitative delusions of the auteur, has evidently moved on to bigger and better things.
For now, the mythologised narrative of how Megalopolis almost never made it to the screen will certainly overtake the film itself.
Megalopolis is in Australian cinemas September 26.
