Megalopolis: Coppola’s necessary act of cinematic rebellion

Few directors in history, apart from those with strong political perspectives, have succeeded in dividing the film world so sharply, creating stark rifts among festival juries and fueling ongoing debates over whether their works are masterpieces or missteps.

Quentin Tarantino's 'Pulp Fiction' (1996), Gaspar Noé's 'Love' (2015), and Lars von Trier's 'Antichrist' (2009) stand out as films that challenged conventional boundaries, leaving a lasting impact. These works pushed the limits of filmmaking, breaking traditional forms and boldly expressing art in its most unrestrained and explicit forms.

This time, Francis Ford Coppola, one of the most important directors of his time, brought forth the same vigor and contention with his four-decade long passion project – 'Megalopolis' (2024). So, is it a a masterpiece, or is it a misstep? 

Critics around the world labeled it with so many adjectives—mega bloated, self-indulgent brawl, absolute madness, epic fail, and whatnot. On the contrary, some called it gorgeous, intentionally imperfect, truly epic, a directorial swan song, and so on. 

In the end, it's beyond good or bad, entertaining or boring, fascinating or bloating – it's a 'necessary' film, which takes on the challenge of going off-Hollywood, truly living up to the genuine idea that film is an art. 

Megalopolis is a relentless pursuit of a visionary artist's wandering experience, and surely not just any film that should be emptily rejected or labeled or deserve a facile explanation. 

The story of Megalopolis is built on the settings of New Rome, an archetype of New York City, where a futuristic architect, Cesar Catilina (portrayed by Adam Driver), envisions building a more egalitarian world for the people to achieve better selves. 

Driven by a prophetic afflatus and high-spirited morals, Catilina is hell-bent on building Megalopolis, which will preserve the past and all its wondrous heritage and succeed the New Rome. The fulcrum of his dream city is Megalon. 

This interdimensional mysterious metal substance seemingly possesses infinite capabilities, such as healing wounds, shaping and creating structures, and, most importantly, manipulating time. 

But creation requires sacrifices, and the artist needs to embrace the terrors of purgatory; the vision of Catilina gets obstructed by the outworn belief of city mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), portraying the quotidian practice of social structure to be in power and control. 

Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel), the mayor's daughter, becomes Catilina's love interest and an intrinsic part of his impulse to create. As their love and obligation to creation bloom, Cesar's cousin Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf) feels the pain of unrequited love towards Julia and later becomes a pretentious anarchist movement leader. 

On the other hand, Catilina's former lover, Wow Platimum (Aubrey Plaza), deceives the Megalopolis's history's richest man and Catilina's uncle, Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight), into marriage with her beauty extraordinaire to satisfy her obsessive desire for money and power. 

The New Rome and the Roman Republic share many similarities, including government structure and power division. Coppola took this as a reference and tells a modern tale while drawing parallels between ancient Rome and contemporary America. 

The director intentionally used vivid imagery, poetic expression, profound symbols, and surreal and abstract ideas as a pretext to deliver a story of dueling and dwindling ego, the evolution of human civilisation. He explored the themes of utopia, dystopia, and moral and societal transformation. 

For example, he resorted to experimental camera display and hallucinatory sequences to describe a drug-induced scene that transforms a painting of a womb into twisting human bodies and evokes the feeling of lost-in-reverie through a layered approach and philosophical ideas. 

Megalopolis is filled to the brim with various forms of humor, including low comedy, deadpan, and slapstick, and symbolizes existential absurdity, especially in the chapter of Vesta, virgin sweetheart of New Rome. Vesta Sweetwater (Grace VanderWaal) took a virgin pledge to get married as a virgin, like ancient Rome's Vestals Virgin. 

The story of Megalopolis has its fair share of narrative elements—it has drama, humour, conflict, romance, and redemption, but it does not solely rely on storytelling. It's a rare example of an experimental film that challenges the traditional cinematic narratives. 

It's about breaking the form, weaving a new fabric of visual aesthetic, shaping cinematic language, and redefining it for tomorrow's filmmakers. 

Megalopolis is an expression of cinematic insanity and unbridled imagination. It would have been a loss to the film fraternity if Coppola had not wanted to show the audacity of his escapade to make Megalopolis, even when his crew members were baffled by the idea and asked themselves, "Has this guy (Coppola) ever made a movie before?"

As a dialogue of Catilina reads in the movie—"If we leap into the future, we prove we are free," Coppola took his ultimate liberty in filmmaking, embodying the meaning of 'free.' However, to do that, he was not forgetful about the past. 

He used the background score as an homage to the silent film era, and a heightened and expressive musical arrangement was used to convey emotion and grandeur. Some images also allude to someclassics—a pale and grey hand behind scattering clouds reaching out to the full moon and grabbing it might refer to Georges Méliès's A Trip to the Moon (1902). 

Megalopolis is an auteur film that truly embodies the audacity of a bonafide filmmaker who was only devoted to his eccentricity and passion, not motivated even by a fraction of commercial or critical acceptance. On the whole, it is an ode to artistry in which Coppola never lost control and fiercely expressed his sentiments towards arts, society, and civilisation.