A mega-movie you have to see

We love watching the mighty fall. For some viewers, that schadenfreude will be enough reason to watch Francis Ford Coppola’s critically divisive and commercially disastrous “Megalopolis.”

But that’s not why you should watch it.

I saw it during its brief three-day run at the Cameo Cinema in October, but Cameo owner Cathy Buck says Coppola will come to the Cameo for a special screening before the end of the year. Tickets will probably sell out in approximately 15 seconds, so subscribe to Cathy’s weekly email blast at cameocinema.com if you want to snag one.

I’ll be honest: The movie is an incoherent mess. Its ideas are declaimed (via on-screen text, Laurence Fishburne voice-over, or both) instead of rising organically out of the story. The female characters are defined solely by their relationships with powerful men. The dialogue is stilted and the performances don’t even try to mimic the naturalistic style that’s in vogue these days. The early scenes are punctuated by reaction shots from characters we haven’t been introduced to yet.

And by golly, I adored it. The provocative ideas, literary and cinematic references, stunning visuals, bizarre humor, and over-the-top performances, costumes and production design came at me so fast that my brain could barely keep up.

I wasn’t bored for a second. In fact, it was the rare movie that could have used another 30 minutes or so to flesh out some of the supporting characters and subplots. At one point Dustin Hoffman ranted about concrete and steel, but I had no clue who he was or why he was in the movie. But to Coppola’s credit, I wanted to know.

In an era when most big-screen budgets are poured into IP-driven brand extensions where some hapless director is given a corporate “bible” of dos and don’ts, “Megalopolis” is an audacious, sui generis tour of one brilliant man’s overactive imagination.

If you know anything about Coppola’s career, you’ll see the parallels between him and main character Cesar Catalina (Adam Driver), a genius who won the Nobel Prize for inventing Megalon, some kind of quasi-organic building material that can conjure up futuristic urban landscapes and regrow flesh. Catalina can also, for reasons that are never made clear, stop time.

In a Romanized version of New York City, Catalina’s idealistic, borderline-megalomaniacal dream of an urban utopia is stymied by the hidebound forces of politics, finance, celebrity and journalism.

Catalina’s vision of a world where art, commerce, science and humanism exist in harmony parallels Coppola’s own struggles with the movie industry, which he found so stifling and antithetical to his idea of art that he created his own studio, American Zoetrope, where filmmakers would have free rein.

Coppola’s artist-driven model never became the industry standard, and I can only imagine how dismayed he must be at the parade of interchangeable sequels, remakes and reboots that dominate big screens while the most daring filmmakers are relegated to streaming services. Just the fact that “Megalopolis” exists after 40 years of false starts and an estimated $120 million of Coppola’s own money is a demonstration of such defiance and will that Catalina himself would tip his cap.

Coppola balances his great-man-of-history narrative with the competing forces of powerful elites and, on the flip side of the regressive coin, ignorant populists who rally around a Trump-like demagogue. A lot of the ideas about different forms of power don’t cohere amid the razzle-dazzle spectacle, but Coppola throws so many of them at the screen that you’ll be thinking about the movie for days after you watch it.

And like it or not, understand it or not, you’ll see things you’ve never seen in a movie.

During a disaster sequence, the writhing shadows of agonized victims are projected upon towering skyscrapers. A statue of Lady Justice comes to life and slumps against a wall in despair. You’ll see orgiastic bacchanals, chariot races in Madison Square Garden, deepfake revenge porn, a sexy musical number about chastity, and psychedelic drug trips right out of a Jodorowsky movie.

And if you’ve ever longed to see Shia LeBeouf get shot in the butt with an arrow (and face it, if you’ve sat through a few of those awful “Transformers” sequels, you have) then step right up for a double dose — he actually takes one in each cheek!

There were cinematic nods to Georges Méliès, Fritz Lang and Sergei Eisenstein. There were literary nods to Shakespeare, Marcus Aurelius and Ayn Rand. For best results, read about the Catilinarian conspiracy of ancient Rome before you watch.

“Megalopolis” is too disjointed and weird to appeal to a mass audience, but it will attract a cult following and keep film students and meme-makers busy for ages — one line in which Driver condescendingly tells someone to “go back to the club” already went viral on TikTok.

But I mostly look forward to its effect on aspiring filmmakers. Will “Megalopolis” inspire some teenage savant with an iPhone and a ring light to make a sprawling, audacious masterwork that captures his or her own idiosyncratic view of the world?

And if that kid’s intensely personal cinematic statement electrifies viewers and catches Hollywood’s attention, what might that mean for the future of movies? I can’t wait to find out.

Because you know what’s more thrilling than watching great artists fail?