In an age where big budget movies are increasingly written by committee or computer, Megalopolis does not make a convincing argument for honouring the passion project of an individual filmmaker. It does, however, make a gleeful Viking funeral for one particular strain of auteur. Schadenfreude enjoyers will delight in this deliciously unintelligible Benadryl dream, the rest may want to give it a miss.
Megalopolis endeavours to contain noir mystery, a sci-fi epic, a dystopian romance, and a political satire; with none done well, one wonders if for every decade Coppola was left to work on it, a new incomprehensible dimension was added. If he’d simply made it in the 80’s as originally planned, would it have made more sense, or even been good? For this to be true, there would need to be some moments of clarity or brilliance. However, there is nothing to regret in this feature length perfume commercial; each of its 138 minutes so lovingly overwrought, so joyously crammed with nonsense that this must have always been the only way. He sold his winery to fund this 120-million-dollar vision, and now we can see the genius behind The Godfather, freed from the money men. Creativity is said to benefit from limitations; his creativity was likely the only thing unharmed by his limitless power in production.
It is aesthetically confusing and bizarrely acted, maddeningly paced and thematically hollow, and it is his entirely his; after a career of classics, he has produced a blockbuster for an audience of one, sure to top the charts of his lavish home cinema. Francis Ford Coppola is the soul financier, creative, and fan of Megalopolis, leaving us to debate not the merits of his project, but of his vanity.
Illustrated by Melena Orleans