“When does an empire die? Does it collapse in one terrible moment? No, no… But there comes a time when its people no longer believe in it.”
This quote, stated by Fundi Romaine, is featured in “Megalopolis,” a longtime passion project for filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola and his first film since 2011’s “Twixt.”
“Megalopolis” follows Cesar Catilina (portrayed by Adam Driver), an architect and inventor who resides in New Rome, a futuristic version of New York City with architecture reminiscent of Ancient Rome (including columns) along with residents donning names that are reminiscent of emperors.
Cesar constantly conflicts with New Rome’s mayor, Cicero (played by Giancarlo Esposito), due to his plans to rebuild the city into a utopia with a particular building material known as Megalon. At the same time, Cicero’s daughter Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel) grows a fascination with him.
There are many other characters in this story, such as financial journalist and reporter Wow Platinum (played by Aubrey Plaza), who was once connected to Cesar and craves power for herself. Jason Schwartzman and Chloe Fineman also appear as Jason Zanderz and Clodia Fulcher, respectively.
With“Megalopolis,” Francis Ford Coppola finally brings his decades-long passion project to the silver screen, although it ends up falling short of being actually good. While the premise is quite intriguing and promising, and while there is certainly a good film in here somewhere, the execution is horrendous, along with line deliveries and performances that are downright baffling. These include a bizarre performance from Shia LaBeouf as Clodio Pulcher, one of Cesar’s cousins, who craves revenge against him. Another example of this is Jon Voight, who portrays Hamilton Crassus III, Cesar’s uncle and the head of delivers a rather strange performance — with one of the highlights of it him drunkenly saying random observations in the second act, that becomes unintentionally hilarious to watch. Notoriously, there is the unintentionally hilarious delivery of the line “Go back to the club,” during a scene in the first act where Cesar is confronting Julia over a letter sent to him.
There are even more terrible line deliveries within that same scene, including Driver descending into a strangely Southern accent that becomes a horrible Foghorn Leghorn impression.
Along with this factor, “Megalopolis” contains many subplots that would appear to be crucial to the main storyline but seemingly go nowhere and are never addressed for the rest of the film — halting the film in its tracks for absolutely nothing. A major instance of this is a subplot involving Cesar and up-and-coming pop star Vesta Sweetwater (played by Grace VanderWaal) in the film’s second act. There is also a heavy overuse of voiceover and narration, all from the perspective of Fundi Romaine (played by Laurence Fishburne), Cesar’s assistant. While Coppola’s reasoning makes sense (especially considering how heavily inspired the film is by the real-life Catilinarian conspiracy, right down to Cesar’s name), as he attempts to create a modern Greek chorus, it comes off as being too grandiose, especially considering the film’s subtitle is A Fable.
As for the cinematography of the film, Mihai Mălaimare Jr. (whose filmography includes Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2012 drama “The Master”) captures a few decent shots including some scenes of Cesar in the back of his car, looking out of the window at night, during the second act (with these shots having a color palette). Besides these shots, much of the cinematography is bland, at worst, coming off as way too flat and digitized.
While having a promising premise, “Megalopolis” executes it in the worst possible way, with subplots that are way too convoluted for its own good, and bizarre and baffling line deliveries. As a result, the film turns out to be a convoluted mess that honestly should’ve been made years ago, instead of this year.
“Megalopolis” is available for preorder on Amazon Prime Video on November 12.
