Francis Ford Coppola has spent many years desirous about a film challenge now referred to as “Megalopolis.”
And it exhibits.
The sprawling drama packs so many consequential themes into its two-plus hours it may have yielded a half-dozen movies. Perhaps extra.
As is, “Megalopolis” is an excellent mess, a conflict of tonal kinds and perception techniques that delivers till it leaves us confused, if not annoyed by its attain.
Star Adam Driver deserves an honorary Oscar for holding all of the fascinating items collectively.
Driver stars as Cesar Catalina, a robust architect hoping to remodel New Rome into town of the longer term. Powered by his vitality invention, the Megalopolis challenge is like nothing we’ve seen earlier than.
Cesar’s imaginative and prescient received’t come with no battle. He’s countered by Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who has extra standard plans for city renewal.
Suppose a large on line casino that feeds into town’s amoral pinnings.
Coppola’s yarn is at its greatest when it captures the bacchanalia behind New Rome. It’s a freakish mixture of old-world appetites and trendy cravings, and it speaks to our present occasions.
Not in any manner remotely constructive, thoughts you. That’s a part of its narrative heft. The grandiose rating and playful costumes add to a chronologically confused tapestry.
Take TV talker Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza). She’s as vapid as she is beguiling, an ideal image for the ethical rot on the metropolis’s core. Naturally, she flocks to billionaire Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight, hamming it up), a star in a metropolis the place greed and avarice reign supreme.
The Mayor’s daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) falls for Cesar’s imaginative and prescient however doesn’t need to betray her father.
Which imaginative and prescient will win the day?
Curious characters revolve round the principle gamers, together with the inscrutable Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf), a cross-dressing joker who may upend Cesar’s plans.
Others aren’t given sufficient display screen time, together with a fixer performed by the legendary Dustin Hoffman. But handing Laurence Fishburne double duties – he performs Cesar’s trusted ally and the movie’s narrator – is a masterstroke. His line readings on the latter entrance make audiences assume, “Morgan Freeman who?”
Coppola’s imaginative and prescient is assured and boldly authentic. This cityscape marries trendy structure with classical themes right into a wondrous, unsettling canvas. The auteur could also be in his 80s, however very similar to fellow icon Martin Scorsese he brings a vitality to his imaginative and prescient that belies Father Time.
Bleak humor abounds, however at occasions its tonal method often journeys up the fabric. A 3rd-act sequence involving Voight’s character evokes the mistaken form of laughter. Earlier sequences land with extra storytelling authority.
It takes some time to soak up the movie’s subtitle: “A Fable.” It’s each a warning and a technique to excuse the movie’s flaws.
Some Coppola tics aren’t adopted up with sufficient perception. Cesar can cease time, an interesting gambit Coppola and co. fail to completely examine.
Adam Driver tells us that he was going to take a break from performing till Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘MEGALOPOLIS’ got here alongside.
“Francis himself, he’s a type of administrators that just about each actor I do know whenever you get that chance it’s going to be attention-grabbing” pic.twitter.com/8dJeABJul2
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) September 24, 2024
What does all of it imply? Coppola is on a quest for optimism, and to get there we’ll should push previous the whole lot that divides us to discover a brighter future.
Good luck, not less than off display screen.
It’s laborious to think about one other actor holding “Megalopolis” collectively like Driver does. He’s the principle attraction, the straight man to the madness swirling round him. His work on the “Star Wars” franchise possible ready him for such an outsized, uncommon gig.
Good.
In “Megalopolis,” the obstacles appear much more daunting than in actual life. But the story steers us towards a future that could be brighter than we ever thought doable.
For each cringe-worthy alternate or ill-conceived gamble there’s one thing profound and delightful to admire. “Megalopolis” is a worthy cinematic mess.
HiT or Miss: “Megalopolis” is daring and cringe-worthy, audacious and ill-advised. How uncommon and refreshing.