Movie Review: Megalopolis (no plot spoilers)
Over half a century ago, Francis Ford Coppola fictionally introduced us to the history of his grandparents’ world in Sicily in The Godfather (reviewed here) in 1972.
Now, he takes us back 2,000 years and also into the near future with his Roman roots in Megalopolis, opening this weekend.
CONTENT
The Characters
The Actors
The Historical Parallels
The Look and Feel
Conclusion
The Characters
The context of the film is a struggle between two powerful men.
Cesar Catalina (Adam Driver) is a brilliant city architect with a vision of a utopian New Rome. He strikes the viewer as part brilliant designer Christian Dior, part misunderstood product visionary Steve Jobs, and part creative celebrity genius Tony Stark. He is the creator of Megalon, a miraculous material that will last forever, that will build and rebuild New Rome, like the forgotten secret of Roman concrete. He represents the future.
Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Exposity) is the corrupt mayor of a crumbling New Rome who stands for the old repressive traditional values yet loves his family. He represents the past.
But there’s a wild card, Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBoeuf), Cesar’s cousin and the spoiled son of the wealthiest man in New Rome, Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight). Clodio is short-tempered, hot-headed, chaotic, and easily seduced. A family power struggle is reminiscent of The Godfather. He represents anarchy.
The Actors
Talia Shire (Rocky), Francis Ford Coppola’s real-life sister, plays Cesar’s mother, Constance Crassus Catalina, sister of Hamilton Crassus III, a sad and slightly off-kilter matron.
Lawrence Fishburne plays Fundi Romaine, “the historian,” who is Cesar’s personal driver and trusted advisor. He is the narrator of the tale. He’s been in several Coppola movies, starting with Apocalypse Now.
Nathalie Emmanuel (Game of Thrones, Furious 7, Fast X) plays Julia Cicero, daughter of Mayor Cicero, former party girl and muse to Cesar Catalina.
Aubrey Plaza plays Wow Platinum (really), a beautiful, ambitious television economist with confused affections and no moral compass.
Jon Voight, as Hamilton Crassus III, is occasionally sober but always drunk with power and money. It’s like watching the patriarch in the TV show Succession.
Dustin Hoffman, as Nush ‘The Fixer’ Berman, plays it like a Mob Boss. This movie is the first time he and Voight have acted together since Midnight Cowboy in 1969.
Historical Parallels
There are many references to Roman history, some subtle, others not. Indeed, it would help if one knew a bit about Julius Caesar’s time. Fortunately, gentle reader, your friendly neighborhood historian will guide you.
Cesar Catalina represents Julius Caesar. A man of incredible influence and power, he defeated his enemies and was on his way to building Rome into a united empire. But he also has shades of Lucius Sergius Catalina, a Roman politician and soldier who instigated the “Catilinarian conspiracy,” a failed attempt to seize control of the Roman state in 63 B.C. Cicero vehemently opposed him (see below).
Mayor Cicero represents Marcus Tullius Cicero, a Roman statesman, scholar, lawyer, and rhetorician who tried to hold Rome to principles during the rise of Julius Caesar. He could be ruthless in executing supposed conspirators and was sometimes an opponent and sometimes a supporter of Julius Caesar. After Julius Caesar’s assassination, he opposed Mark Antony, who ultimately had him executed.
Claudio may be Cato the Younger, who accused Julius Caesar of war crimes in Germania, putting him at risk of being declared an enemy of the state.
Hamilton Crassus III represents Marcus Licinius Crassus, “the richest man in Rome.” A statesman and general, he played a significant role in transforming the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. He defeated the slave revolt led by Spartacus.
Julia Cicero is fascinating: the gens Julia is the name of the most prominent patrician families in ancient Rome, going back almost 500 years before Julius Caesar. “Julia” was the name of Caesar’s mother and daughter. The name was passed down to the Julio-Claudian dynasty, starting with Caesar’s adopted heir, Augustus, and ending with Nero.
The Look and Feel
Coppola could not get a studio to finance this film, which he’s been working on for almost four decades. So he sold part of his Francis Ford Coppola Winery in Napa to finance it himself. (I’ve dined there, it’s fabulous.) He’d also self-financed Apocalypse Now and One From the Heart. The 85-year-old wrote, directed, and produced this film, which cost $120 million. His own Zoetrope Studios produced it.
You can see the money on the screen. While contemporary New York stands in for New Rome — with images of the Chrysler Building and Grand Central Station — these are shot in the same sumptuous color as in The Godfather.
The cinematography is equally captivating from the beginning to the end of the film.
This is Coppola’s magnum opus, a masterpiece — crafted by the maestro of filmmaking. He’s made some of my favorite films: The Godfather I & 2, The Black Stallion, Peggy Sue Got Married, and American Graffiti. OK, he only produced American Graffiti after a young USC scholarship winner, George Lukas, helped him make Finian’s Rainbow. Lukas made American Grafitti as an homage to his growing up in Modesto, CA.
The movie is uneven and, at times, incoherent. There is a drug scene that seems psychedelic and kaleidoscopic. At other times it is poetic, with quotes from Hamlet, The Tempest, Sappo, and Marcus Aurelius.
Conclusion
Is the movie self-indulgent? Perhaps. But it is also daring.
The subtitle of this movie is “a fable,” but it is also a fantasy, some call it science fiction. New Rome has moving pedestrian sidewalks, as described in the 1956 science fiction novel The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke. It is also a parable. New Rome has the same hedonism and excess as ancient Rome: bread and circuses.
This film bends time and stops it. It’s all about time: the past, present, and future. And Coppola seems to be saying that artists must be free to express their artistic creativity if we are to survive into the future.
This film may be better appreciated in the future, like Citizen Kane was. Indeed, it feels like Citizen Kane is the kind of movie Coppola wanted to make, a movie like the greatest movie of all time.
It’s hard to say I liked the movie, not everyone will. Our theater neighbors walked out early. There were times that it was so difficult to follow that I just held on, like a roller coaster ride. But I appreciated that it was a great movie, and after a single viewing, I realized there’s more to understand. But it is spectacular, I’ve never seen anything like it. It reminds me of seeing Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: a space odyssey the first time. It was mind blowing, but after seeing it a half a dozen times or so since, it begins to make sense.
“We are such things as dreams are made on.” –Prosporo, The Tempest
Grade: B?
You’ll like it if: you enjoy visually stunning, imaginative, non-linear stories whose plot is a challenge to follow.
You won’t like it if: violence, vulgarity, and a graphic sex scene are not your thing.
Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
billpetro.com