MEGALOPOLIS : Tuesday 15th October 2024

I finally got around to seeing the M Rated 'MEGALOPOLIS' this week, which was released here in Australia on 26th September. This American epic Sci-Fi film is Written, Co-Produced and Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, whose previous film making credits take in the classic 'The Godfather Parts I, II and III' in 1972, 1974 and 1990, 'The Conversation' in 1974, 'Apocalypse Now' in 1979, 'The Cotton Club' in 1984, 'Peggy Sue Got Married' in 1986, 'Gardens of Stone' in 1987, 'Bram Stoker's Dracula' in 1992, 'The Rainmaker' in 1997 with 'Twixt' in 2011 his most recent film before this one. Coppola spent US$120M off his own money to fund the production of this passion project which he first began considering in 1977 and for which he began script ideas in 1983. Production of the film has been on-again off-again over the years with him returning to the film in earnest in 2019. The film was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at this years Cannes Film Festival, where it Premiered in mid-May, and has proven divisive amongst critics with mixed or average reviews. Costing in the region of US$130M to produce, the film has so far grossed just over US$11M.

Set in an alternate USA, New Rome is dominated by an elite group of aristocratic families. Although the Roman elite professes to live by a strict moral code, these aristocrats decadently enjoy forbidden pleasures including wild parties, a lavish lifestyle and all the trappings of their wealth and social standing, while ordinary Romans live on the poverty line. Among this elite group is idealist and forward thinking architect Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) who wins the Nobel Prize for inventing the revolutionary building material Megalon. In addition, he secretly has the ability to stop time. He treats his superpower as a metaphor for his artistic workings - when Cesar stops time and space, everyone and everything else remains frozen.

Despite Cesar's success, he has fallen into bouts of alcoholism. Years earlier, his wife mysteriously disappeared, and District Attorney Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) prosecuted him for murdering her. Although Cesar was exonerated, he remains wracked by guilt, believing that his wife committed suicide because he was too wrapped up in his work. Cesar still longs for his wife, prompting his jealous mistress, TV presenter Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), to leave him. 

Later at a live broadcast event, Cesar and Mayor Cicero offer different visions for the city's future. Cesar proposes using Megalon to build 'Megalopolis' - a utopian urbanist community, while Cicero argues that a casino will provide immediate tax revenue and jobs. During the event, Cesar meets Cicero's well educated, but directionless, daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel). They initially have a disliking for each other, but after showing her his vision for Megalopolis, Julia intrigues Cesar by showing that she is the only person who can still move when Cesar stops time. They become lovers.

Wow marries Cesar's uncle Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight) the world's richest man and the CEO and owner of the Crassus Bank. Although Crassus likes his nephew, his mind and health are in decline, and he is easily manipulated by individuals like his other nephew, Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf) who has his own designs on inheriting the Crassus Bank. At the lavish wedding reception of the happy couple, the headline musical act is pop star Vesta Sweetwater (Grace VanderWaal). 

In an attempt to discredit Cesar, Pulcher leaks a paparazzi video of Cesar having sex with the alleged sixteen year old Vesta, prompting Cicero to condemn Cesar publicly. Although Cicero arrests Cesar for statutory rape, Julia vindicates Cesar by discovering that Vesta faked her age and is actually twenty-three years of age. 

After a redundant Russian satellite crashes to Earth and destroys large swathes of New Rome, Cesar begins construction of Megalopolis from the ruins, financing the project with his family fortune. However, the high cost of building Megalopolis contrasts with the level of poverty on the streets. Pulcher becomes a populist politician, encouraging ordinary Romans to oppose Megalopolis as an expensive folly. The draw of power leads Pulcher from populism to fascist agitator.

Julia, now pregnant, tries to broker a peace accord between Cesar and her father by taking her father to see the Megalopolis construction site. However, Cicero is unimpressed with Cesar's utopianism, although his wife Teresa (Kathryn Hunter) feels the opposite. Cicero begs Cesar to leave Julia - in exchange for which, he offers Cesar valuable blackmail material - a written confession that Cicero knew Cesar's wife committed suicide and maliciously prosecuted Cesar anyway. Cicero gives Cesar three days to decide, but needless to say Cesar declines.

Wow tries to force Cesar to leave Julia and marry her instead by saying that when she has inherited the vast Crassus fortune, she would give it all to him. When Cesar outright rejects her, she freezes his account at the Crassus Bank. She enlists Pulcher to manipulate Crassus into handing over control of the bank. When Crassus learns of Pulcher's duplicity, he has a stroke and collapses. Pulcher hires an assassin in the form of a nine year old boy to kill Cesar, who shoots Cesar in the head at point blank range, while he is signing an autograph for the seemingly innocent young lad. Cesar's doctors use Megalon to rebuild his skull, and repair his severely damaged tissue. 

Cesar and Cicero become allies after rioting Pulcher supporters attempt to storm Megalopolis and City Hall. Pulcher and Wow taunt the seemingly bedridden Crassus, but Crassus kills Wow and injures Pulcher with a hidden bow and arrow shooting a arrow directly into Wow's chest and firing off two arrows into Pulcher's arse. Cesar confronts the rioters, pleading with them to believe in his vision of a better future. His speech wins over the crowd, whose followers hang Pulcher and his right hand man Aram Kazanjian (Balthazar Getty) upside down from a scaffold.

With renewed financial support from Crassus, Cesar finally completes Megalopolis. Cicero, holding Julia and Cesar's baby daughter, Sunny Hope, promises to help Cesar build a better future. On New Year's Eve, as the clock counts down the seconds to midnight, Cesar turns to Julia and asks that she stop time. She does so, freezing them both and all around them leaving only Sunny Hope unaffected by the time stop . . . and she's way too young to click her fingers to resume normal service like her dad would have done!

The film also stars Laurence Fishburne, Talia Shire, Jason Schwatrzman, James Remar, D.B.Sweeney and Dustin Hoffman.  

The film opens up with the words 'Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis : A Fable' etched in stone. In other words it is a short story that tells a general truth or is only partly based on fact, and so it is here with references aplenty to real characters and their goings on from ancient Rome transplanted into a future world where those characters play out much as their ancestors might of done in the days of the Roman Empire. And in that respect I guess the film delivers showcasing the wild parties, the sex, the back stabbing, the murders and the political intrigue all wrapped up in a utopian vision of a future city where everyone lives in harmony and happily ever after. Visually the film is rewarding enough but that's just about where the positives end, as the cast of top notch A-list talent appear almost bewildered by what the Director is asking of them except for Shia LaBoeuf who chews up the scenery and his dialogue with reckless abandon, while others - Hoffman, Schwartzman, Shire and Fishburne are underutilised. As for the story - it goes around in circles and never seems to go anywhere leaving you with the feeling that after almost two-and-a-half hours of viewing it is seriously undercooked. It's a real shame because from Coppola I would have expected a whole lot more, but then perhaps his long gestating opus is his last hurrah, he ploughed his own hard earned cash into it, and he finally got to realise his passion project on the big screen, and all the naysayers be damned!

'Megalopolis' merits two claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-