There Should be More Films Like Megalopolis

A Belated Review

When Alex Garland was directing the adaptation of Jeff Vandermeer’s novel ‘Annihilation’, a weird, unnerving piece of science-fiction, he only read the source material once. The film was, according to Garland, ‘the memory of the book’, keeping the dream-like atmosphere and Lovecraftian horror but jettisoning some of the book’s plot. In that spirt, my review of Francis Ford Coppola’s film Megalopolis is not a review of a film, but rather the review of a memory of film. Unavailable to stream as of the time of writing, and not playing in cinemas, I only have my hazy remembrance of the film to go on, and my hastily scribbled incoherent notes.

I wrote about Megalopolis back when we weren’t quite sure what it was. Some details were clear; it was financed with Francis Ford Coppola’s own money, gained from the sale of his winery; it was a long-gestating passion project that Coppola had been thinking about for nearly forty years; and it had something to do with Ancient Rome. But mostly, everyone was confused but excited. Dribs and drabs dribbled out. There were set photos of Shia LeBeouf in drag and Adam Driver with a Caesar haircut. Coppola joined Instagram and recommended that people read Hermann Hesse and David Graeber. It looked fascinating.

But slowly people began to turn against the film before it even came out. There’s a theory that the backlash stemmed from the major Hollywood studios. They had had their knives out for Coppola ever since he founded Zoetrope, his film company in the 1970s and 80s. Zoetrope tried to change the way that American films were made, and Coppola was following this revolutionary mantra with the way that Megalopolis was made: self-financed and outside of studio control. The film’s premiere at Cannes was an unsuccessful echo of what Coppola had done with Apocalypse Now – this time the gamble didn’t pay off and critical reception was mixed at best. The image of Coppola’s granddaughter, beaming proudly behind him as he fended off questions from journalists however, made it clear that Coppola was interested in legacy and artistic merit rather than praise in the moment.

There were more hurdles for Megalopolis before the film came out. There were #MeToo allegations levelled at Coppola. It was alleged that while filming a nightclub scene Coppola kissed and hugged some of the extras on-set, without consent. A secret video of the alleged incident was filmed, in a breach of on-set rules, but the extra kissed in the video later described the press characterisation of the incident as inaccurate. Another extra described her ‘shock’ at being hugged by Coppola. Coppola has filed a libel lawsuit against the journalists who made the allegations.

Another brouhaha involved the trailer for the film. Megalopolis had trouble finding a distributor in the United States, with Lionsgate eventually agreeing to distribute the film if Coppola paid for the marketing. One of the early trailers for the film featured quotes from negative reviews of Coppola’s previous films. The idea was that critics had not properly grasped Apocalypse Now and The Godfather and that they were guilty of the same mistake with Megalopolis. The voiceover, taken directly from Laurence Fishburne in the movie, thundered that ‘true genius is often misunderstood,’ an allusion both to Coppola and to Driver’s character of Cesar. The problem was that the quotes were made up, an AI hallucination most likely. A publicity storm ensued, one that at least got attention for the movie, but it was not a good indication that the marketing team had really taken the greatest care.

When Megalopolis finally came out, it was a financial disaster, a flop of epic proportions. The box office returns barely numbered $13 million, the costs exceeding $130 million. Reviews were mostly negative. A few critics – notably Richard Brody in the New Yorker – praised the film, but most were against, as were the majority of audiences. My own experience was indicative. Seeing the film with me at a Friday night screening on opening day were about fifteen other people, three of whom walked out about halfway through.

I am, in writing this, committing much the same sin as the movie-going public and the entertainment press. Nearly all of the coverage of Megalopolis was about the things surrounding the movie, not the movie itself. People debated about how it was self-funded. When the movie opened, they laughed at the pitiful ticket sales and about how much money Coppola was about to lose. Yet the movie qua movie remained undiscussed. This phenomenon was identified by X commentator Lindyman; everything is metrics now. It started with sport, and slowly moved to other parts of the culture. Fans started caring about the behind-the-scenes aspects of their chosen interests. In the case of movies, it was about budgets, and intellectual property rights and box office returns. Art and business merged together. How successful a film was financially became a way of determining how successful a film was artistically. Yet, we know that the opposite is true, or at the very least that there is no correlation. According to film historian Sam Wasson, the obsession with the business of the film business really began in the late 70s with the collapse of the New Hollywood. The public gloated at the disasters of One From The Heart and Heaven’s Gate, and became cynical and distrustful, first as a result of Watergate and then because of the Begelman scandal, which concerned embezzlement at Columbia pictures. But now the trend has reached its ugly apex. That is not good news for the artform.

So, to briefly discuss Megalopolis as a piece of art, I think that it is very good. My initial reaction was one of awe and puzzlement. The film is perhaps one of the strangest that I’ve ever seen, mostly because of the fact that the strangeness is a natural part of what it is rather than some pretentiousness put-on. It’s not some low-budget indie being weird for weird’s sake, rather it’s a big budget movie that is mostly straight-forward and then veers off into long bouts of experimentation. The acting was strong throughout. Theatrical and over-the-top and varied in tone amongst the cast, but I thought somehow everything cohered. Adam Driver was very good as the visionary architect Cesar, and Aubrey Plaza shined in the femme fatale role as the absurdly named Wow Platinum.

I was also struck by the film’s visual beauty. Nicholas Barber, the BBC’s film reviewer called the visual effects ‘horribly cheap and amateurish’, but this critique really misses the mark (I had to double check that he wasn’t the world’s first blind film reviewer). The hazy golden glow that the movie has adds to the dream-like atmosphere, and some of the CGI spectacle is truly striking, and unlike anything I’ve seen in mainstream movies. Coppola uses CGI in a way that makes it stand out and draws attention to it, unlike the standard use-case which is to create fake images designed to look real. Like Coppola’s use of shadow-puppets and matte painting in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the CGI here draws attention to itself and points out to the audience that they are watching a film. It may look to ‘cheap’ to some, but for me it has an other-worldly beauty; if used right, as in Miami Vice and the Star Wars prequels, digital technology can often rival the aesthetics of celluloid.

Megalopolis is above all a movie of ideas. Aesthetically it was a treat and intellectually it leaves much to ponder. Viewers describing the film as incoherent have simply not paid enough attention. Coppola describes the decay of modern society with its breakdown in values, celebrity worship, hedonism, and above-all stagnation. The metaphor of the Roman Republic is clearly a stand-in for the modern United States. Yet the movie is never too didactic. It is not subtle, but it has several messages at once, and thus is nuanced.

Coppola’s film is ultimately humanistic, the plea of an old man for a better world. A world built on love but also on progress. Technology ends up saving the day, but it would be useless without humanity. Ultimately family wins. Megalopolis is a humanistic Fountainhead. Rand with a heart. And that’s a counter-cultural message in 2024. Gender experimentation is portrayed as a sign of decadence, mental illness and evil. The film has a pro-growth, pro-science message. It is unashamedly pro-natalist and anti-stagnation. In an age where vague social forces like ‘racism’ and ‘sexism’ are seen as the drivers of history, Megalopolis confirms that great men create change. Coppola warns of populism and demagogy but he also warns about the danger of crowds and democracy in general.

There are several clips of Megalopolis posted on YouTube and the comments are disheartening. Snarky and negative, the commentors seem to think that they could do a better job than everyone involved. They don’t recognise the beauty, the ambition and the message of the film – and they seem to think that they can adequately judge it based on a sixty second clip. Media literacy has truly collapsed – these people would not know a good piece of art if it hit them in the face. Marvel films and TikTok have been a poison for the culture. Even most film critics failed at their job. The risible Mark Kermode panned the movie but gave a positive review to the 2016 Ghostbusters remake. We live in an era of idiocracy. There is a valid criticism of Megalopolis: that it errs in execution, that it reach exceeds its grasp. But even if that were true, failed ambition is better than no ambition at all. Coppola did something remarkable. He strived to disrupt the system, as he has throughout his whole career, and he’s succeeded. His critics just serve to prove his point. Megalopolis will age very well, I have no doubt.

This article originally appeared in Interkom magazine.