Megalopolis review: Welcome to Coppola’s baffling fever dream, but one which has earned its right to exist

There’s a famous photograph, you know the one, snapped in 1932 of workers sitting atop a steel girder 260 metres above ground as they break for lunch while constructing New York City’s Rockefeller Center.

The image captures a moment in the city’s history, when within three years, the Rockefeller Center, the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building all shot up, towering symbols of the city’s ambition to become the centre of commerce, culture and civilisation.

There’s a tableau in Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis that must have been invoking that iconic image and all that it represents. The scene features the characters of Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), an architect who can stop time, and Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel) as they engage in a romantic interlude atop swinging beams.

The grandiosity of city-building as it relates to the health and direction of a civilisation underpins the thematic core of Coppola’s grand epic, Megalopolis. Although it is one in a cornucopia of ideas the master filmmaker is toying with.

To say that Megalopolis is overstuffed is an understatement, but you never fault it for its ambition. This is a film, as inconsistent, frustrating and nonsensical as it is, about legacy, which is not something you can deny someone of Coppola’s stature.

He has been making Megalopolis for four decades. Not rolling the camera, but conceiving it, noodling on it, writing it, rewriting it, financing it to the tune of $US120 million and, finally, in production on it since the late 1970s. It is not a labour of love, it is a labour of commitment to a higher ideal of humanity.

Coppola lays down a challenge to his audience. By drawing a comparison to the bread and circus excesses of Rome that saw its collapse, Coppola wants everyone to strive for better, because, in the words of Helen Lovejoy: “Won’t somebody please think of the children?!”. The republic is at risk.

Cesar has invented a miraculous building material and wants to remake the city as a future metropolis, even if that means bulldozing its history. Julia is the daughter of the mayor (Giancarlo Esposito) who opposes Cesar’s vision, preferring to maintain the status quo.

Also mired in the city’s fate are Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight), an obscenely wealthy banker, his son Clodio (Shia LaBeouf), who despite being part of the elite, tries to rile up populist, Trumpian anger, Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), a TV presenter and Vesta Sweetwater (Grace VanderWaal), a “virginal” teen pop star.

The battle is on for the city’s soul and its future, but the twists and turns it contorts to get there are baffling as hell. Megalopolis is a fable because if you take it literally, it will never make sense. This is a maximalist fever dream that could break your brain if you think about it too much even though that’s exactly what he wants, and to fuel conversations.

If someone else’s name was on the title card Megalopolis would be a disaster.

But Coppola comes with his own context, and he is so earnest about his exploration of the end of empire and legacy as both a filmmaker and a person watching the collective careering towards catastrophe, you have to respect and admire that Megalopolis exists.

Rating: 3/5

Megalopolis is in cinemas on September 26