Movie Review : Megalopolis (2024)

Whenever a film I want to like gets bad reviews, I take it as a personal challenge. I watch it with a rose-colored knife between my teeth and chip on my shoulder, actively scanning for positive aspects and guess what? I find them more often than not. Film critics are like sports pundits: they want to feel smart about the point they’re making more than they want to actually say something smart. Francis Ford Coppola’s new movie Megalopolis is a different animal, though. I’m with everyone here: it’s a fucking fiasco.

… but it’s a fucking fiasco for fascinating reasons.

In case you're not already aware: Megalopolis tells the story of Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), a "brilliant” and "visionnary" architect who can somehow stop time even if it isn’t all that important to the story and who's invented a new material called the megalon, which has the power to alter reality and…. I believe build things on its own according to a divine design? Anyway, none of that is really explained because Cesar is busy battling a hegemonic mayor (Giancarlo Esposito) who refuses to let him save the world.

Ayn Rand and the Architect-As-An-Allegory

Alright, where do I start? Ayn Rand references are always a good starting point when you’re discussing a fiasco, right? Well, Megalopolis is quite inspired by Rand’s seminal novel The Fountainhead. It’s not a literal retelling, but it pulls certains scenes right out of the book. Notably the scene where Howard Roark dynamites a building that doesn’t follow his design, except that instead of a poorly designed building, Cesar Catilina blows up housing projects. Yep, you’ve read that right.

Catilina’s justification is even more mind-boggling than his act: by putting a roof over struggling people’s head, you prevent them… from getting a better roof over their head? The act is a statement against the lack of vision of mayor Cicero. By putting people on the street, he wants to pressure Cicero into greenlighting the megalon. Because everyone knows that the cure to poverty lies in psychedelic architecture right? In any case, poor people are instrumentalized in an urban planning squabble just like are in the real world.

So yeah, there’s a lot of The Fountainhead to Megalopolis. But there’s a lot of other references too. There are also allusions to influential New York architect Robert Moses, but Megalopolis really is about Francis Ford Coppola and the place he wants his legacy to occupy in cultural history. A filthy rich, time-manipulating rock star architect every woman in the city wants to fuck and who works with a reality altering material is a thinly veiled allegory for a film director. The "architect" of our collective imagination.

Also, Cicero’s administration is a stand-in for the movie industry who is more concerned with giving the people want they want more than to help them imagine new world and genuinely alter society through art. You’ve read that right. Over its 300+ revisions, the scenario of Megalopolis became about making Megalopolis? I believe the point Coppola is trying to make is valid, but is his allegory pompous, scornful, exploitative, confused and unfortunate? You bet your sweet ass it is.

Everything Else That’s Wrong With Megalopolis in a Nutshell

I could write 5000 words about ways Megalopolis doesn’t work and makes for a hostile viewing, but here’s the gist of it: this whole ancient Rome theme (including Cesar Catalina’s awful name) is based on the story of an idealistic roman senator no one gives a shit about, Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus and every other pop star initially sold with a "virginal" public image are catching thirty minutes long stray bullet that otherwise has nothing to do with the story, there’s also a dead wife subplot that makes no sense whatsoever.

Want me to continue?

In the final scene of the movie, Francis Ford Coppola uses documentary footage to make his point even more fucking bland and obvious, Cicero and his daughter (Nathalie Emmanuel) start talking together in latin just to make the film feel more Ancient Rome-ish at some point, Shia LaBeouf (who I otherwise like) plays the most power hungry obvious populist dictator and as if he wasn’t obvious enough by himself, he stands on a Swastika-shaped tree at some point. I shit you not, guys. I shit you not.

I could probably ransack my mind for more egregious and unnecessary references added just for the sake of making Megalopolis seem more sophisticated than it really is, but I think you’ve gotten the point. It’s a complex film, it has a lot of moving parts intertwined together, but it’s not complicated and it sure shit isn’t profound. It’s not even two hours and a half, but I walked out of there feeling like I’d just spent four hours in the theatre. It’s a grueling experience on the sheer volume of information alone.

*

Megalopolis is terrible, but at least it’s making a spectacle out of it. Like all grandiose, overthought works of art that took way too long to come out, it’s tone deaf, self-preoccupied and way, way not as profound as it thinks it is. I did get a kick out of it as a hate watch, though. It was satisfying to pick apart to understand. You could also decide that it means nothing and that it’s just a beautiful, jumbled pile of abstract concepts before you see it, but I’d strongly advise you don’t pay for it anyway. Wait for streaming.

2.3/10

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