Last night I saw Megalopolis, and I’m still working through it.
What an odd, sweeping, often ridiculous, often magnificent, bizarre film.
The best way I can describe it, is if Shakespeare and Jacques Tati had a child, that child took Ancient History as an outside subject at Uni, took a few experimental drugs and then made a film, then this would be it.
I’m pretty sure that’s a compliment.
Megalopolis is Francis Ford Coppola’s self appointed magnum opus, with a cast including Dustin Hoffman, Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Nathalie Emmanuel and Kathryn Hunter.
Coppola sets out to show the fall of Rome amid modern day America, comparing it with the decline of the USA, and the Catilinarian Conspiracy transported and retold.
The master director sold substantial property in order to self fund this project, even covering marketing costs – and what he has created is certainly raising eyebrows and dividing audiences.
But is it good?
It feels like decades ago Coppola had this idea for a film that he became so enamoured with he didn’t move it from its pedestal. An unexamined obsession, which probably could have benefited from being twisted and turned at some point.
If you were to ask me what this film is about… I’d struggle. I can tell you roughly what happens.
A mad scientist wants to create a Utopia, and there are different factions at play who try to stop him, who don’t believe in his dream, who don’t think it’s possible.
Others who have seen it may have a completely different idea about what it’s about and what happens, and that in itself says a lot.
It has the full Shakespearean cast, the treachery, the double crossing, the devilish women. Power playing out on the stage.
The great Bards input moves from the ham fisted – Adam Driver’s Cesar performing the full “To Be or Not To Be” in one of the first moments we meet him, to the rather more playful “will no one rid me of this f***ing scientist” (that is a slight misquote, but only a slight one because I was having too much fun to take precise notes).
But on the whole, it’s a Midsummer Night’s Dream that triumphs. Nothing feeling quite real. It’s ethereal and mystical, working on different rules than the ones we know and never quite letting you get your feet on the ground, with confusion used as a tool to bend the narrative to the director’s whim.
I perhaps, given how clunky parts of the film were, expected to roll my eyes at several points, but I honestly didn’t. Not once. I did smile, and laughed a few times, and sat wide eyed in confusion, but I never felt cynical or fed up.
Not at any point does the film feel tedious, and the flaws never really have a chance to take over.
So if you ask me now if its a good film. I’ll pause, smile and say: “I really enjoyed watching it.”
How does it look?
Whatever your thoughts around the plot, or the dialogue, you cannot deny it looks absolutely spectacular.
It is grand cinema, with (as mentioned) Tati influences scattered everywhere and old cinema, with a feel of old Hollywood glamour and romance.
Predictably, it is not real world Ancient Rome, but Shakespeare’s Ancient Rome, and that adds a touch of gravitas that even the worst adaptations of the playwright can’t help but have. There’s a magic through his plays that infuse all inspired works, and this one has that golden string woven through it.
The costumes are breath-taking, and each and every actor plays their role to utter perfection, throwing themselves into whatever this film is with reckless abandon.
Coppola is unleashed and does not hold back, creating everything his feverish dreams ever wanted, and that’s a warming thought. Hasn’t he earned it?
The most important point
At the end, all of us in the cinema were watching a film that was completely unrestricted and unfiltered.
What would art look like if it was separate from the tutting and fussing of studio bosses and producers with a full eye on the bottom line?
What if people made art without thought of target demographics and pleasing the masses? What would the world look like?
In the midst of prequels, sequels, multi universes and remakes, with the backdrop of AI and the risk of human creativity taking a back seat, there’s something deeply pure about whatever Megalopolis is.
And yes it’s pretentious, and a bit silly at points, but it is undiluted in every way possible, and that has to be respected.