There’s a moment in Francis Ford Coppola’s self-funded, $ 120 million sci-fi passion project where the pillars of society (oversized statues where the life and colour have been drained out of them) literally teeter and crumble to the ground. There’s also a sex scene where Aubrey Plaza’s hilariously named, power-hungry economist Wow Platinum utters the words “I’m oral as hell!”. The whiplash from the wildly differing tones and unsubtle metaphors throughout this futuristic fable about the fall of an imagined New Rome (a green screen New York) are bewildering and yet absolutely intoxicating. There are things that happen in Megalopolis that need to be seen to be believed.
On paper this film sounds insufferable. In practice it is as enjoyably camp as an early John Waters’ production. Adam Driver plays tortured genius Cesar Catilina, an architect who can stop time but whose vision is undermined by commerce, politics and corruption. Giancarlo Esposito plays Mayor Cicero, whose daughter and former party-girl Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel the only actor who doesn’t seem like she’s playing dress up) starts to work for Cesar only to fall in love… Jon Voight is the wicked money man Hamilton Crassus III and Shia LaBeouf plays a spoilt nepo baby who manipulates the working class. It’s a dog-eat-dog world and treachery is everywhere. But there’s so much more going on and it’s obvious who the characters’ real-life counterparts are. Be ready to cringe at the patent Taylor Swift references.
In a time where the future of cinema and creativity is under threat, to see inside a director’s mind who is working through his thoughts on modern society, while also pondering some major personal issues (in a similar way to his critically panned Twixt) projected on the big screen will either be the stuff of nightmares or dreams depending on your tolerance for non sequiturs and a deeply sincere if misguided polemic on the state of the nation and culture. Call it a grand folly, call it so bad it’s good, or call it what it really is: a future cult classic. Megalopolis is an eccentric and earnestly crafted simulation of contemporary life. Reader, I left the cinema feeling high!
Megalopolis is out in cinemas on 27 September
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