I went to see Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis today. I felt I had to go see it even though it is being met with very mixed reviews and getting characterized much like Kevin Costner’s Horizon fiasco as a vanity play by an aging great one of film. Great filmmakers don’t seem to be able to fade away, they have to go out with a bang…and it’s usually one on the noggin. But then again, Megalopolis got a standing ovation in Cannes this year, so who’s to say if that was just a lifetime achievement ovation or respect for the filmmakers specific vision in this film. So, I went by myself on a Sunday morning and watched it at the Angelika in Carmel Mountain with five other earlybird oldsters who were probably hoping for another Apocalypse Now.
The movie is set in New York City, which has been renamed New Rome just in case you missed the overall theme of the the crazy place we find ourselves in culturally as a nation. And that would be Rome in its final moments. To begin with the iconic nature of the New York scenes is hard to miss. The cinematography and feel is much like movies like The Hudsucker Proxy where a campy tale is being told in a way that is portrayed as a humorous but still poignant story that sends a loud cultural message. In the same way that Alex Garland’s Civil War, released earlier this year, worked hard to not be a direct dis on one political party or another, Megalopolis has both a recognizable array of characters that match off against political figures currently on the scene and circumstances and policies that are decidedly resonate to things we are hearing on the campaign trail by one candidate or another. Jon Voight plays Hamilton Crassus III, clearly intended in look and demeanor like Donald Trump, even though he is not one of the main dueling characters. I guess Coppola knows that Voight is a big Trump fan. He is the uncle of Cesar Catalina, played by Adam Driver, who is very much the central protagonist. Crassus’ son, however, played by Shia LaBeouf, and his wife/girlfriend, Wow Platinum are both working all the angles for Crassus and themselves and feel a bit like the Trump scions. The very timely role of the black Mayor of New York City, played by Giancarlo Esposito, made famous by his role as the efficiently evil Gus Fring in Breaking Bad, is almost too much the spitting image of the recently indicted and disgraced real Mayor Eric Adams. Because no one wants to get sued, these character roles are intentionally blended and mixed up making the film very hard to keep track of as it wanders through its plot.
Coppola is unmistakably commenting about the state of America in many ways. The partying, the drugs, the sexual innuendo and the overall decadence of New Rome is clearly an indictment of modern America. And the fact that the main stage of life for everyone in New Rome centers around the political mischief of all of these characters, feels very familiar as we sit here with 36 days to go until November 5th and all hands are on deck and all eyes are on the center ring. Some of the speeches could have been lifted verbatim from Republicans and Democratic candidates, both playing strongly to the proletariat on the surface, while trying to pull surreptitious levers of power behind the scenes.
The poster for Megalopolis looks like the cover of an Ayn Rand novel or perhaps Citizen Kane, with all the drama and seriousness of strong social commentary set amongst the slow pettiness of personal excess ambition and great hubris. There is no clarity in this script and while you can see the venality on all sides, its very hard to establish who the good guys and bad guys are. I think if this was any other moment in history, I might have walked out in the middle despite my great respect for Coppola and his other great films. Instead, I decided to stay and do my best to glean worthwhile messages from the script.
It pains me to say it, but we have gone down a very indecent path in this country (and world) for the last decade. No matter how disturbed people are by what some see as the liberal failures in the cities or even the corruption that exists on both sides of the aisle in Congress, nothing compares to the rampant disrespect for humanity and truth that has played out on the Republican campaign trail. My red friends like to raise all manner of false equivalencies to suggest that both sides are equally to blame, but that is simply not true. I understand and can even agree with the thinking that people are neither inherently good nor evil, but that we all have both sides operating in us to varying degrees. But the debasement of civility and the win at all cost, ends justify the means mentality of the Right has done more to break down our cultural norms than anything else. The recent indictments of Democrats like Robert Menendez and now Eric Adams are clearly bad things, but note that they are being taken to task by a Democratic Department of Justice. Compare that to flagrant efforts by the Right to remove Trump from any sense of accountability for anything he has done regardless of the preponderance of evidence to suggest clear guilt. Everything gets justified by “the bigger picture” and yet the true bigger picture here is that we are falling into a ditch of disreputability where ethical standards have little or no meaning.
Megalopolis tries hard to bring everything down to a common message of hope for the younger generations, but its unclear that there is a path to lead them to that better place. Those focused on the future at all costs may be ignoring the needs of people in the here and now. Those focused on pleasing the population in the moment are characterized as sacrificing the future for momentary generational pleasures. Those people show a lack of concern about their contribution to society and just want to be people pleasers for the benefit that it brings to their power base.
While the messages are important ones in the movie, I suspect that when we are out of this moment and things eventually settle back into some sense of normalcy (and I clearly hope and expect that to include the fading of the Trump name from our national stage), this movie will not have the staying power of a Citizen Kane, Apocalypse Now or other movies rife with social commentary. I’m a fan of Coppola’s other works just like I’m a fan of Costner’s body of work, but neither Megalopolis nor Horizon are going into the pantheon of film greats. Rather than create such megamindbenders, maybe these great artists should stick closer to what made them famous.