COME A CROPOLIS

"Don't let the now destroy the forever."

I think Francis Ford Coppola has broken my brain. Having finally decided to watch the director's cinematic behemoth Megalopolis (2024), I now find myself questioning the illusion of genius. Cesar Catalina (Adam Driver), who I assume to be Coppola’s alter ego in the story, seems to improve nothing through his creative innovations, other than making New York City increasingly resemble a biomorphic architectural greenhouse designed by early computer-generated imaging. If Cesar is paving the way for a new approach to city design, then Coppola (in his grand delusion) believes he is somehow paving the way for a new type of cinema. Their results are equally terrible.

Megalopolis is clearly more of Coppola’s manifesto than a coherent story, and it has about as much substance as a United Nations consensus document: similarly full of vague, noncommittal language a la Kamala Harris, yet expecting to rouse the unenlightened masses to a new paradigm way of thinking, as if it were an oracle or a culturally defining moment that we’ll later recognise as both prescient and visionary. We won't.

In truth, this film feels more like the last days of Rome meets Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged, as if the Dude (Jeff Bridges) from The Big Lebowski had written it after smoking on a 'big-hitting,' ultra-potent bong. It’s hard to believe that Coppola has been waiting decades to make this film when it genuinely seems as though he made it up day by day on set, trying to dream it somehow into existence.

The director has also said he hopes people will watch this movie every New Year's Eve. And despite my many criticisms, I can easily imagine a kind of kitschy Max Bialystock appeal to throwing Megalopolis parties, where everyone dresses up as characters from the movie and gets completely obliterated with alcohol—and possibly drugs. In fact, I’m fairly certain this film would be greatly enhanced with stimulants, because watching it sober made me feel as desperate for booze as Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend.

Beyond the risible dialogue, lack of tension, pacing, and any compelling structure, Coppola at least delivers the final scene with a suitably laughable and Razzie-worthy flourish, planting a random baby at the foot of the screen on a tiny carpet in case it rolls away. If anyone wonders what a reductionist version of Kubrick’s ending to 2001: A Space Odyssey would look like if shot through a TikTok filter, this gives you some idea.

When Cesar implores the mayor (Giancarlo Esposito) to not "let the now destroy the forever," I couldn’t help but think a similar rephrased version of the sentiment should have been whispered gently to Coppola in light of his pending magnum fiasco—"don’t let the now destroy the past"—with his acclaimed legacy of The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and Rumble Fish now sitting uncomfortably alongside this galumphing white elephant.

Anyway, there’s no point kicking a man when he’s down—or, indeed, when he’s high, which Coppola most likely was throughout this entire ill advised project.