Megalopolis

...Wow.

This has been one of the most talked about movies of the year, and consequently, one of the most anticipated, at least by cinephiles. However, many of those conversations have concerned what surrounds the movie, not the movie itself. The mixed reaction to its early investor screening. Its subsequent struggle to find a distributor. The inclusion of an actor in the movie theater for one scene. Its validation of how frequently men supposedly think about the Roman Empire. Aubrey Plaza's character being named Wow Platinum.

Which makes a certain amount of sense, because this thing must be seen to be believed.

Megalopolis is a 140 minute cacophony, a visual feast that is far, far more ambitious than competent in every dimension. It swings wildly from stunning feats of imagination whose grandeur just manages to poke through the its cheap surroundings, to familiar neon noir-coded city streets. One moment, Caesar Catalina (Adam Driver) and Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel) will be standing on some steel girders suspended in the air, backed by a matte painting of a sun-drenched New Rome, looking like the set of a low-budget musical. The next, we'll be in the streets as Clodio Pulcher (Shia LeBeouf) tries to corral the angry populace with cries as compelling as "Power to the people!".

There are some truly gorgeous sequences. When a sudden tragedy befalls New Rome, the deep red light from the destruction casts gorgeous and haunting silhouettes of people in their final moments against the skyscrapers of the metropolis. There are half a dozen dream-like montages, most as beautiful as they are disorienting, but a couple of which deliver their message in a wonderfully abstract and visually arresting manner. Most notably, one around the midpoint which conceptualizes what the future could be in the hands of Catalina given a blank slate, and one later in the wake of tragedy. The imagery of the statues which represent American ideals collapsing from weariness is a lovely visual idea which sticks the landing, part of the subjective representation of how Catalina sees the world, which we momentarily return to a few times.

But that's just it. For all its grandiosity, for all its inventiveness, for all its success in being like nothing you've ever seen, Coppola's vision lacks conviction. This is New Rome, a city at the center of a fable ostensibly discussing the forces which lead to the fall of the Roman Empire and how it relates to modern day America. Yet so many scenes feel like they're basically set in the grungy, grimy 1980s NYC, maybe with a sci-fi/fantasy element or two thrown into the background. Some of that is deliberate, an attempt to contrast the gaudy glitz and glam of the bourgeois and ruling classes with the state of the city's poor ad neglected. Unfortunately, instead of cohering into a city at war with itself, it lands as a disjointed hodgepodge of at least two different movies. Mixing classical Roman architecture with NYC's wide variety of existing styles makes a certain amount of sense, which is why I wish we got so much more of it. I wanted to be transported to New Rome, but left feeling like it was a few columns laid on top of modern day NYC.

This clash is made worse by the supremely uneven VFX. On a number of occasions, it's clearly a stylistic choice. Catalina is a Robert Moses-like figure, someone with a vision that no one else can see or understand, which promises to transform the face of the city. So it makes sense that he so often stands apart from his surroundings, as he's not truly of them, further emphasized when Julia enters his orbit and becomes one of the few on his wavelength. But more often, it appears to be sloppiness with no clear intentionality, such as when the circus performers are bowing in front of a crowd which is poorly lit and incredibly flat, despite containing hundreds of people. This renders many of the locations incredibly artificial, inserting much distance between you and the story, which is fatal for a fable.

This confused maximalism carries over to the narrative, an overstuffed tale whose biggest sin is a lack of structure which leads to it taking forever to give any indication of what this is all for. We spend a long time looking at the disagreement between Catalina and Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), further heightened when Catalina first employs then romances the Mayor's daughter, and yet come away feeling like their differences have no stakes. Clodio features repeatedly throughout the first two-thirds, but that's more to establish his position as a spoiled rich kid who may (or may not) be sleeping with his sister and has it out for Catalina for some reason. Catalina's former lover and "journalist" Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza) is our entry point to a web of double-crosses and conspiracy using her marriage to Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight) and targeting Catalina. Some of these subplots aren't even seeded until the midpoint, and there are others I've omitted. They lazily meander along while their sheer number means our attention must jump manically between them, making the plot hard to follow despite not all that much happening.

Coppola seems to have known he'd lose people's attention somewhere between having his characters fully quoting Hamlet and his insistence on them talking over a score which isn't mixed for it. So periodically, the soothing voice of Laurence Fishburne (who also plays Fundi Romaine) cuts in to give us a bit of exposition, almost always read off a "stone" tablet inscription we're shown at the same time. Similarly, important moments are punctured by characters bluntly stating their thoughts or the thoughts of others. There's some element of Coppola not trusting his audience to understand what's going on. But the greater sense you get is one of a man less interested in stories than ideas, and thus he doesn't bother to push either the script or his actors to add much depth.

Despite the absolutely stacked cast, many of whom I've yet to mention (Kathryn Hunter! Jason Schwartzman! Talia Shire! James Remar!), the performances do nothing to save the film. Driver is constantly grappling with the insanity of the script, Esposito know he's above this, and Dustin Hoffman doesn't seem to know why he's there (neither do we). Plaza gets to have some fun as her subplot ramps up, but her character is undercooked, often leaving her little to work with. LeBeouf almost pulls off his limited screen time, looking part magician and part chaos pixie and hurling himself into the role with infectious glee, but the character is too ill defined to capitalize on his good work. The one exception is Nathalie Emmanuel. Though her role is defined as audience insert, she manages to embody her dreams and desires and drive, never losing sight of them. She brings a regal poise to every scene she's in, and leverages it to keep her character grounded and moving forward. She's the only one who has a successful emotional arc, which comes across as being despite the script, not because of it.

And then, somewhere near the final third, the movie finally begins. All those plot threads start winding together, allowing us to more easily slip between them and the visual ideas he wishes to explore. It's here we get a glimpse of the movie which could have been, using fresh modes of montage and contrasting the events unfolding with archival footage, and using the recent disaster as a catalyst to start toppling the dominoes. This is the zone in which Megalopolis shines, by far its most successful run. Not perfect, mind you: the dialog doesn't really work, the plot is thin at best, and there are some truly otherworldly line readings. But it's more directed and propulsive, and thus compelling. The previous 90 minutes be damned, I was dazzled.

The sum of all its parts is a film that is horribly misshapen, nowhere near as insightful as it endeavors to be, and a complete mess in every conceivable way. The score features bizarre needle drops, its conception of its own history is nonsense, and it cannot be bothered to develop half of the ideas it introduces. I haven't even bothered to mention Catalina's invention "Megalon", because while it frequently shows up at critical moments, its specifics are entirely unimportant to the plot.

And yet...I kind of love it?

It's not just the occasionally gorgeous visuals, the way it can be read as a metaphor for a great director's career, or the truly groundbreaking interaction with a person in the audience. Those help, sure. But more so, we're watching a man bare his soul to us, warts and all. Coppola made exactly the film he wanted to make. Sure, he struggled to communicate his thoughts, but that leads to the communal experience of me and my neighbors bursting out laughing at unplanned times as the absurdity and insanity flowed over. It's a strange combination of all sorts of influences and homages to history and fiction alike. In many ways, it feels like what I imagine stepping into the mind of another person would be: cluttered, awkward, and without any real form to speak of.

It's unique, it's ambitious, and it's earnest. Coppola really thought he had something here, restarting the stalled development multiple times over the decades, refusing to let it die, and eventually pouring a tremendous amount of his personal fortune into it. It's admirable, regardless of its level of success. May we all find something in our own lives to be as passionate about.