Born in 1939, Francis Ford Coppola is not a postmodernist like his 1940s-born friends, Brian DePalma, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and George Lucas. Postmodern directors make films out of older films, like “Star Wars” with its many explicit references to samurai, science fiction and western pictures. Conversely, Coppola is interested in progress, an ideal touted by the modernist movement. Coppola’s new film “Megalopolis” embodies and explores the question of progress, both ideologically and aesthetically.
Cesar Catalina (Adam Driver) wishes to build a city like no other, called “Megalopolis” made of an infinitely renewable material he created known as “Megalon.” He is opposed by Frank Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), the mayor of “New Rome,” who prefers to keep things the same. Cesar’s Megalopolis is made not of square buildings but rather of glowing yellow tendrils that twist and turn. It does not remind of science fiction works of the past such as “The Jetsons” and “Blade Runner,” nor of the Futurist cities depicted in “Metropolis” and “Città Nuova.”
Coppola’s freshness goes beyond architecture. His images seem bizarre yet exciting. Massive shadows projected on a skyscraper miming horror at incoming destruction is obviously surprising, but even less outrè concepts like an opening party montage have a startling reality and originality. A sublime romantic scene, in which Cesar and Julia (Natalie Emmanuel) kiss atop suspended beams a mile in the sky, evokes Coppola’s beloved 1950s musicals in the same way that Picasso’s “Weeping Woman” evokes a human face. Both artists return to the essence of their subject, then remake its form from scratch.
“Megalopolis” baffles because its plot is so tangential. Frank Cicero steps away from his wife (Kathryn Hunter) and his associate (Jason Schwartzman) to take an important meeting, and the camera lingers for 10 seconds to watch his wife practice dancing and his associate play on the drums. Human idiosyncrasy is elevated to the importance of world shifting events, an attitude that reminds of modernists T.S. Eliot and James Joyce’s attempts to reorient narrative structure. Cicero’s daughter Julia glancing affectionately at Cesar while he’s arguing politics indicates Coppola’s preference for emotional over practical detail. The film is full of grace, like a bedtime discussion between Cesar and Julia, their bare backs vulnerably showing. Driver’s sincere smile completes the scene.
Coppola is not blind to the failings of his own obsession with progress. The relentless pursuit of progress is an ideal shared by liberalism and fascism. Cesar quotes the “to be, or not to be” monologue from “Hamlet,” and the excerpt reveals Coppola’s ambivalence about his own Faustian ambition. Hamlet dreams of a romantic death, fighting against all instinct to go out in a blaze of glory, yet does not forget the potential consequences: “aye, there’s the rub […] what dreams may come, when we shuffle off this mortal coil? Must give us pause.” A 17th century audience would be immediately aware precisely which post-death “dream” Hamlet is concerned about– hell. Cesar’s flaws, from his sacrifice of people’s homes to build his utopia, to his elitist cruelty, to the Frankenstein-esque sight of a destroyed eye healed with Megalon, candidly express Coppola’s doubts about himself and his vision.
What allows Coppola to maintain that he is a liberal, not a fascist, is his dedication to egalitarianism. His dignified portrayals of an intellectual Black politician and an interracial romance evince the sincerity of his spoken ideals. Cicero speaks to Julia in Latin, a tender expression of their shared love of Roman philosophy. It is not merely a matter of revealing people’s virtues, but acknowledging common humanity. Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza) is a classic temptress archetype, a manipulative woman who uses sex and deception to get to the top, yet Coppola and Plaza encourage empathy with her desire for power even before she snarkily shares her lower class past. Wow maintains a witchy malevolence, such as when her fingers are superimposed over chaos she caused. Cesar’s buffoonish cousin Cladio (Shia LeBeouf), who attempts to take advantage of mass misery, inspires innocent laughter, not a disdainful sense of superiority.
I would certainly not trust Francis Ford Coppola with the future of society. He “jumps without seeing if there’s anything underneath him,” as his dear friend George Lucas once said of him. Yet his magnanimity is overwhelmingly moving, and his aesthetic freedom is exhilarating. These virtues are precious, and worth fighting for in any society. Coppola stated on X that he wanted his film to start a discussion. It has given us the tools to do so.
Editor-in-Chief: Jordan Premmer, Chief Copy Editor: Sophia McCrackin, Managing Editor: Jordan DelFiugo, Opinion Editor: Dakota Duran, Scene Editor: Elina Graham
