Failure of vision

Francis Ford Coppola is a director of note mainly for the time period when he was part of the insurgent "New Hollywood" in the 70s, who were a collection of filmmakers that were lauded for breaking the studio system, such that the directors of films finally had more authority than the studio did. The studios just looked at the books and what might sell, while said directors had vision that audiences responded to. In Coppola's case, that means films like the Godfather trilogy, Apocalypse Now, and The Conversation. But he's also cited for one of the films that ended said era in One from the Heart, which led to a decade of him producing "commercial" (i.e. studio approved) films to pay back the debt he owed from that colossal failure (critically panned and earning ~$600k against a $26m budget.) Nothing he's done since the 1970s has been the type of success that you'd expect from someone who directed and co-wrote what many people regard as the greatest film ever made (The Godfather; for the record, I am not one of those people) and, in fact, he hadn't done anything for 13 years prior to the release of Megalopolis, which he wrote, directed, and produced. And when I say "produced", I mean "footed the bill for", since he'd been carrying this idea around for 40 years and could convince no one to fund it until he sold some of his businesses in order to do so, which should tell you quite a bit about why it couldn't have been done before now. That "why" is because it's a total travesty of a production and easily the worst thing I've seen since Power of the Dog.

Now, a note on that latter film. At the very least, it had a discernible plot. It wasn't a good story, but you could follow along (for two... and... a... half... hours... at... this... pace...) and at least get some great performances out of the people that were helping to tell that story. Megalopolis has none of this except the horrible pacing. The plot is supposedly based on the Catilinarian conspiracy from 1st century BC Rome. In point of fact, it has absolutely nothing to do with it. The conspiracy was about a demagogue, Lucius Sergius Catilina, who lost the election for consul and tried to instigate a populist insurrection to overthrow the then-current consuls, one of whom was Marcus Tullius Cicero. Sounds like modern times, right? We're dealing with that right now with the walking creamsicle and his collection of MAGAts. Except this film doesn't present that scenario in any way. Adam Driver, playing Cesar Catilina (Coppola was convinced to rename the character "Cesar" so that people would, y'know, get that it was a film about ancient Rome) isn't a political outsider. He's not leading a revolt. He's a visionary inventor who's created something called "megalon" which is supposedly the pathway to economic stability and prosperity for the downtrodden. Is this like the real Catilina promising to wipe out debt (albeit not just for the poor, but also the very wealthy) like the current orange idiot's obsession with tariffs? If this is the political warning that Coppola was trying to convey, then why is Cesar Catilina the hero of the film? Is it because Coppola is following the widely discarded idea that Cicero, in writing about the events, not only embellished but outright lied about what took place and that's why Lucius Catilina has gone down through history as a villain and general threat to democracy? I mean, OK, but then why do many of the opponents of Cesar Catilina, like Mayor Franklin Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), end up endorsing the hero who has apparently saved society as we know it?

It's that kind of discordancy that is emblematic of the entire production. Apparently, Coppola would spend hours locked in his trailer, only to emerge with new scenes that had nothing to do with either the script or the day's shooting schedule, leaving everyone else to catch up to his "vision." The entire film is like that. We veer from parties that seem to be emblematic of societal decay but also seem to be made up of all of the characters shown as heroes at the end to scenes of Catilina hard at work on the MacGuffin (Meg-uffin?) that he has supposedly already invented to Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza) scheming about how having the world at her feet isn't good enough if she can't also have the one man who wants to do nothing but reject and also remake that world. What makes this even worse is the dialogue, which could have been plucked from the nearest 8th grader's first attempt at a novel. There's not a single line of dialogue in the film that I can recall, having seen it just last night, except the scene where Driver recites Hamlet's entire nunnery scene speech ("To be or not to be...") and the sequence where Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel) regurgitates bits of Marcus Aurelius in rapid succession. In other words, the only memorable dialogue in the entire 2.5 hour film is that written by other writers. The rest of it is boilerplate exposition and exclamation that you'd think would be used in a basic theater class as an exercise. The story from the set was that Coppola asked Driver to do the nunnery speech as a warm-up exercise and then left it in the film because it fit with... what? I have no idea.

Meanwhile, the central element of the plot- the megalon -is, as noted, a MacGuffin. It doesn't really do anything. It's just there for the rest of the non-story to revolve around. It finally makes a concerted appearance in the last 10 minutes, doing what it's claimed to be invented for (reshaping the way people live), but is mostly just visual effects that don't actually impact the story. At one point, Catilina is injured and megalon is used to seemingly save his life, but the miracle substance doesn't affect his body, his character arc, his attitude, or even his appearance in any way. It's just perfect plastic surgery and that major event in the story dissipates like everything else. That includes most of the performances. With a cast like this, you'd expect that you're going to get something interesting, at least. But with the parts they were given (or woefully miscast with; can you imagine Gustavo Freng as a confused buffoon? Because that's what Esposito is in this film.) or the lack thereof, it's not really a surprise that none of them were able to generate much. Dustin Hoffman is in this film for about 5 minutes of screen time and three lines. Like the megalon, he doesn't actually do anything except show up on the cast list, which may be the whole reason he was included, but even if his part were larger, I'm not sure what he could have done with it. Jon Voigt had a significantly greater part and still spent most of his time just being there while other people shouted monosyllabic platitudes around him. It takes real effort to make actors this good look this bad and that's even when they're doing something mildly interesting, like Shia LaBeouf as Claudio Pulcher going down on Platinum while she insists he call her "Auntie Wow." It has nothing to do with the plot and is completely incongruous with the scenes that came just before it, so it fits the definition of titillation perfectly, but at least someone was doing something.

I've really never seen anything like it and really don't care to ever again. I frequently suggest whether films are worth the time and effort of seeing them in this space and this is one in which I don't think I can mention a single, redeeming feature, unlike many others that I've not cared for. I sincerely wish I had the 2.5 hours of my life back. It's possible to see a film just so you can see something that was so bad, it's "good." But if you're going to do that, at least see something short, like The Room. This film is quite simply a mega waste of time (and money. Yours and Coppola's.)