Megalopolis — A Metallic Opera of Pretension and the Art of Monumental Mediocrity

Megalopolis: full review

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Some films get shot; others are dragged along for decades like a debt of honour. Megalopolis belongs to the second kind. Francis Ford Coppola had been turning over this Roman fable transplanted to a gilded cardboard New York since the early eighties, and when he finally decided to make it he did so the way only a man with nothing left to prove can: putting up around 120 million dollars of his own money, much of it from selling part of his wine empire. Coppola didn't mortgage the house: he mortgaged the winery. The result premiered at Cannes in 2024, split critics down the middle and grossed about 14 million worldwide. Rarely has a number summed up a misunderstanding so well.

The story takes place in New Rome, a metropolis that is New York in a toga. Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) is a brilliant architect, a Nobel laureate for inventing Megalon, an almost miraculous material with which he wants to build a utopian city. Opposing him is Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), pragmatic, conservative and convinced that the future is a line item. In between stands Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel), the mayor's daughter, who falls for her father's enemy. Around them circles a court of vultures: the banker Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight), his grandnephew Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf), a textbook populist with an emperor complex, and Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), a financial reporter willing to marry whoever it takes to get her hands on a bank. The names don't hide anything: it's the Catilinarian conspiracy with skyscrapers, and Coppola underlines the allegory with a highlighter in case anyone dozed off in Latin class.

Oh, and Cesar can stop time. Literally. He shouts "Time, stop!" and the world freezes while he walks among the skyscrapers like a director on his set. The metaphor isn't subtle, but it doesn't try to be: Coppola is painting himself, the artist who wants to stop the clock to finish his work before the city, the market or death stop him.

An opera falling down the stairs, but in style

The problem with Megalopolis isn't a lack of ideas, but an excess of them. Every scene tries to be political satire, romantic melodrama, philosophical treatise and carnival parade at once. There are chariot races in an arena that looks like Madison Square Garden, a Soviet satellite crashing into the city, an assassination attempt, a wedding, a populist uprising and a "to be or not to be" from Hamlet recited as if the camera were an auditorium. The script doesn't move forward: it bounces. The dialogue sounds like declaimed theatre, characters switch motivations without warning, and Laurence Fishburne's narration, as Fundi Romaine, Cesar's aide, tries to impose order in the tone of someone reading the programme of an opera that has already started.

And yet there is something hypnotic about the wreck. The cinematography by Mihai Mălaimare Jr., who had already worked with Coppola on Tetro and Twixt, turns New Rome into a set of gold, marble and neon that mixes art deco with imperial Rome and the Macy's parade. Some images have a kitschy, defiant beauty, the kind only someone who no longer cares about looking ridiculous dares to film. Osvaldo Golijov's score matches it with a grandiloquence that, instead of hiding the excess, embraces it.

A cast in different movies

Adam Driver takes Cesar with an almost religious seriousness, and that's what holds the contraption together: when everything around him collapses, he keeps believing. Giancarlo Esposito brings craft to a mayor the script can't decide is villain or victim. Nathalie Emmanuel has the most thankless role, the woman who serves as a bridge between two men who speak in capital letters. And then there's the other movie, the one with Aubrey Plaza and Shia LaBeouf, who seem to have received different instructions and decide to play a B-movie farce. Plaza devours every shot as if she knew she's the only fun thing in the Empire, and LaBeouf struts with a cheek bordering on cabaret drag. Jon Voight, Dustin Hoffman, Talia Shire and Jason Schwartzman complete a guest list that looks like the seating plan of a farewell dinner.

Because that's what Megalopolis is, deep down: a farewell. Coppola dedicates it to his wife, Eleanor, who died in 2024, and the whole film feels like a handwritten will, full of crossings-out and wine stains. At some special screenings an actor even stepped up to ask Cesar questions, as if cinema could still be a live event. It's a film impossible to defend and hard to hate. The marketing didn't help either: the US trailer had to be pulled for featuring quotes from classic critics who never wrote what was attributed to them. For a film about truth versus spectacle, the irony was too perfect.

The best

• Coppola's suicidal courage: Betting his own money on a film without a safety net, in an industry that now only makes sequels, deserves respect even if the leap ends in the pit.
• Adam Driver: He believes in Cesar when nobody else does, and that faith holds up the most absurd scenes.
• The visual design: Mălaimare's New Rome is a delirium of gold and marble that lingers long after the plot is forgotten.
• Aubrey Plaza: She understands she's in a farce and enjoys it without shame.

The worst

• A script that bounces: Too many plots, too many speeches and characters who change their minds according to what the scene needs.
• The highlighter allegory: Catiline, Cicero, Crassus and Clodius, in case anyone missed the Roman reference.
• An uncoordinated cast: Some play a Shakespearean tragedy and others a cabaret comedy, and they never meet.
• The pacing: 138 minutes that feel like an opera without an intermission.

The Verdict of Claqueta Ácida

Megalopolis is the fever dream of a genius who refuses to retire: overflowing, ridiculous, beautiful and exhausting in equal measure. It doesn't work as a story and barely as satire, but it has more ideas per minute than an entire season of streaming releases. Coppola wanted to build a city of the future and has raised some beautiful ruins. You visit them with more curiosity than emotion, but you visit them. 💀