Well, I finally got around to seeing "Megalopolis" today, going in with, I promise, a completely open mind.
I found it to be, in one word....
spectacular.
A spectacle of sights, sounds, emotions, and yes....the "p" word that will get me banned if I say anymore in that regard, just like when I got a two day timeout for mentioning America's most popular sports organization.
But this film, which may have been written and directed by FFC, but looks and feels much more like a David Lynch epic, struck me as Coppola's very personal 2:15 take on one particular American and his sons, and what they may do with unmitigated power in the present and future, and that's what Coppola will take to his grave, as his final word on that topic. It's loaded with reflections of the fall of the Roman empire, complete with character names right out of classic lit.
In the film, Adam Driver --- a good actor, but, seriously, has there ever been an uglier leading man in American movies? --- is Cesar, the Hamlet-spouting protagonist who is a Nobel Prize winner for inventing "Megalon", a versatile, malleable, all-purpose building material he wants to reconstruct New City with, extending its uses to fabrics, human skin grafts, etc. I'm reminded of the invention of plastics from petroleum.
Madison Square Garden is the site of Greco-Roman Olympic-style wrestling and chariot races with the mayor looking on like a certain Russian reviewing the passing military might parade.
Cesar is so omnipotent that he obeys no laws. Not man's...not laws of time,…space,… biology,… nor even physics. His influence over his city is such that as his limo drives past iconic statues, they react like a Greek chorus commenting on his actions, morals, and judgment. Assassination? Just FA&FO. He takes as his lover a popular TV tabloid news reporter with the moniker Wow Platinum, played by a wildly out-there Aubrey Plaza.
The casting features characters that seem drawn from David Lynch and the first 40 pages of Esquire and the New York Times Style Magazine, i.e., kinky models in bizarre situations populated by Jon Voight, Shia LeBeouf, Laurence Fishburne, Talia Shire....and a star-making role for the luminous Nathalie Emmanuel, who looks like a hybrid of a young Helena Bonham Carter by way of Jennifer Beals and Bernadette Peters, as the Cesar-hating mayor’s (the always wonderful Giancarlo Esposito) daughter who falls into Cesar’s clutches. Other cast includes SNL’s Chloe Fineman, Jason Schwartzman, and Dustin Hoffman.
The film plays with time in terms of eras: Many tilts are toward the Roman empire; the mayor seeing his daughter in a New City tabloid hitting the clubs with Cesar with the front-page headline “Feds to City: Drop Dead”, a clear reference to when President Gerald Ford declined to bail New York out of bankruptcy in 1975, resulting in the Daily News headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead”. Several luxury cars appear to be from the 1950s. Art Deco is everywhere. An ominous Russian satellite looms miles above the city. “Pink Panther”-like motion detectors appear in one scene.
Roger Ebert used to say that a movie, viewed in a theater, should transport you to another world. “Megalopolis” certainly did that for me. If it’s still here next week I’ll see it again, since I lost 10 minutes due to my silent phone lighting up with emergency messages. Besides, there's so much to absorb I want to review what I missed
while I watched. Critics and moviegoers complain about the Robert McKee-grad screenwriters who punch out boilerplate scripts ad nauseum? Not this one. There is absolutely nothing like it.
I strongly feel that 20 years from now "Megalopolis" will be regarded as a classic, especially when we see what America looks like in 20 years, encapsulated in the movie as Manhattan (or "New City"), but with obvious portent for America as a whole.
