By Kirk Boxleitner
In an era of “forever franchises,” Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” offers audiences the novelty of an actual ending.
When I watched “Return of the Jedi” in 1983, “Revenge of the Sith” in 2005 and “The Rise of Skywalker” in 2019, each time, I foolishly thought I was watching the final “Star Wars” film.
But Coppola is 85 years old now, and all four movies he’s directed during the 21st century have been self-financed, so unless his health and his fortune both undergo virtually impossible upgrades, “Megalopolis” is indeed the last movie he’ll ever make.
If you limit yourself to thinking of Coppola as a has-been who directed pandering pablum like 1996’s “Jack” and 1997’s “The Rainmaker,” or worse yet, zero-budget collapses like 2007’s “Youth Without Youth” and 2011’s “Twixt,” the close of his career is hardly worth observing.
But I grew up with Coppola as a master of cinema, who’d delivered “The Godfather” in 1972, “The Conversation” and “The Godfather Part II” in 1974, and “Apocalypse Now” in 1979, of whom Cyriaque Lamar wrote for Cracked that, during the 1970s, the director “was not only at the top of his game, he was at the top of anyone’s game. Ever.”
So, for our streaming viewing one recent evening, I was joined by my mom, Linda Boxleitner, in honoring Francis’ legacy by screening the capstone to his filmmaking career for ourselves, even though we both expected “Megalopolis” to be a full-blown fiasco.
A funny thing happened on the way to the forum, though, because for all of its considerable faults, we agreed that “Megalopolis” is actually worth watching.
Not that this film isn’t frontloaded with a number of at least moderately insufferable moments.
“Megalopolis” is subtitled “A Fable,” and it’s written in the language of entirely unsubtle allegory.
Modern-day New York City is reimagined as the corrupt and decadent “New Rome,” which is a bit on-the-nose, but Francis is Italian, so I can hardly begrudge him for hearkening back to his literally classical heritage.
Coppola recruited a murderer’s row of acting talent, ranging from longtime collaborators like Laurence Fishburne to newer luminaries like Aubrey Plaza, but he’s tasked them with playing archetypes rather than characters, with each of the main players representing a distinct ethos, with an aesthetic to match.
When combined with this film’s frequent use of green-screen CGI backgrounds, it makes “Megalopolis” feel like an ambitious stage play, albeit armed with appealingly dreamlike visuals.
“Megalopolis” homages Ayn Rand’s novels “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged,” with Adam Driver playing a great man of vision who’s made a scientifically impossible advance in technology, but contrary to the egoism advocated by Rand’s Objectivism, Coppola’s protagonist aims to improve society for everyone’s benefit.
Coppola portrays an ideological conflict that arguably no longer aligns with the emerging axis of modern political divides, but he shows his homework in having kept up with current events, from prominently featured QR codes to a virgin-whore dichotomy subplot that’s not too far from the real-life travails of celebrities like Britney Spears.
Another subplot’s portrayal of populism being subverted into fascism has rapidly become more relevant than even Coppola probably intended.
Indeed, Coppola conveys his awareness that this is likely his last cinematic outing, since he rushes to include as many concepts as he can, and while “Megalopolis” can feel overstuffed as a result, I’m more fond of this film precisely because of such flaws.
Coppola grew up fascinated by sci-fi films such as Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” from 1927, and William Cameron Menzies’ adaptation of H.G. Wells’ “Things to Come” from 1936, and to his credit, “Megalopolis” shares those films’ willingness to be bold in outlining what they saw as the best and worst possibilities of tomorrow, even at the risk of getting their predictions wildly wrong.
“Megalopolis” devotes an extended dialogue to parsing the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius, and while I’m sure it would put the mass majority of moviegoers to sleep, it captivated my autism.
When Driver’s character manages to turn the tide of a mob’s hostility toward him by dramatically proclaiming, “We’re in need of a great debate about the future!” all I could think was, no one in the real world talks like this, but with all my heart, I wish they did.
Yes, Coppola arguably misses the mark with “Megalopolis,” but in the best way, because his hopes for humanity are far brighter than our current behavior seems to warrant, much like how Raymond Massey’s characters in “Things to Come” possessed such an unwavering confidence in our eventual societal progress.
As my mom said, “There are too many threads, but he’s tackling everything, isn’t he? He’s looking to encapsulate the whole of civilization in miniature, and it’s something that people will look back on, years from now.”
If “Megalopolis” is a failure, which it very well might be, I wish more movies had the courage to fail with this much conviction.
