“Megalopolis” is mega chaos

If nothing else, Megalopolis is a whole lot of film. But not in a good way.

Francis Ford Coppola’s long-standing passion project – in development since the 1970s – is a film full of ambition: Megalopolis Gestures at ideas and concepts ranging from cultural decay to national debt to architecture and zoning. It’s a film about the slow, sad death of a once great republic. Yes, Coppola, the director of The GodfatherDespite it believes in America. But he’s not sure America believes in itself, so he made a film that seems to delve into the entire nature of art, society, and human existence, while asking people to reach for more.

Surely, it says, there must be something better – something more beautiful and inspiring, something more worthy of eras of evolution and human struggle – than the way we live now?

If Megalopolis If there is any indication of this, the answer is unfortunately no.

The film is ambitious, yes, but in a way that’s so clumsy it’s funny. The characters speak in elliptical, pseudo-Shakespearean runes that are so absurdly self-serious that they sound like dramatic interpretations of tweets. The film’s story is a thicket of opaque schemes and subplots that are difficult to follow. There are impressive images, but overall the film’s slick digital sheen makes it look like it was shot on an old iPhone. It’s a film that aims to inspire awe, but it’s more likely to provoke an LOL. After watching this film, you will not believe in a better world. You’ll just rack your brains.

Megapolis? More like this, MegaFlopThisIs.

Set in a retro-futuristic version of New York City called New Rome, the film sometimes feels like an elaborate stunt meant to prove that men exist Really, think about the Roman Empire all the time.

The new Rome is decaying, decaying, falling apart, burdened by debts and budget problems. Yes, this is a film based on public finance problems. No wonder it makes about as much sense as a city budget hearing.

To solve the problems of the new Rome, brilliant architect Cesar Catalina (Adam Driver) gets a federal license to clear out the old town and transform it into something new, something beautiful, which in practice is a silly-looking sci-fi cityscape means a special substance called Megalon that can control time. (Unfortunately, that didn’t advance this film’s effort any faster.) But Catalina has a rival in the form of New Rome mayor Franklin Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who wants to build something uglier and more conventional, a city more focused on that Meeting people’s needs now rather than building a monument that will inspire people for the future.

From this conflict arise the characters and subplots of a city, often combined with acting talent from well-known brands: There is Nathalie Emmanuel as Cicero’s beautiful daughter and Cesar’s love interest; Shia LaBeouf awkwardly slips into the role of Clodio Pulcher, Cesar’s jealous cousin; Jon Voight as an old, old financial expert; Lawrence Fishbourne as Cesar’s driver and bodyman; Dustin Hoffman as Nush Berman, a city apparatchik; and Aubrey Plaza as a vain and selfish TV personality whose name is Wow Platinum for some reason.

Wow. Only…Wow.

What any of these characters want in the film, or even what they are talking about in a particular scene, is often shockingly unclear. There are complex government machinations at work that are never explained (well enough, I suppose), as well as various family connections and personal feuds that never quite solidify into a clear plot.

The closest the film comes to a unified dramatic progression is Cesar’s quest to build his new city, but far too often Megalopolis deviates from course and topic. At best, these detours convey inspired visions of the decadence of a declining republic, as in a colorful circus event at the revamped Madison Square Garden with chariot races and professional wrestlers. At worst, the film’s middle hour is just so incoherent that it might have been more engaging if more time had been spent on the details of the city’s financial policies.

Megalopolis wants to be about everything, but in the end it’s about very little.

To the extent that a clear theme emerges, this happens almost unintentionally. Despite all his socio-political images, Megalopolis isn’t really a movie about America, Rome, or human nature. It’s about art, ambition and commerce in Hollywood.

Cesar is clearly a Coppola stand-in: he’s surrounded by visionless leaders, selfish strivers, sneering sycophants and wheezing money men. He wants to create something great, something impossible, something unprecedented, something for posterity. He understands that great artists and great visions are neither understood nor appreciated in their time, but he continues anyway, for the sake of the future. The difference is that Coppola didn’t create a city; He made a film.

I’ll say this for Coppola: the man is a true visionary. His filmography from the 1970s – two “The Godfather” films plus The conversation And Apocalypse now– possibly the largest four-film production ever by a director. His ambition, for all its on-the-nose clunkiness, is radical and laudable.

But Megalopolis is mega chaos. Few will understand or appreciate it now, and I have my doubts about the future.