Given the often self-contradicting comments attending Francis Ford Coppola’s late-career magnum opus since its premiere at Cannes last year, it’s difficult to determine if anyone thinks it’s a movie with “appeal.” Though not nearly as long as it could have been, the movie’s multiple storylines and complex themes makes the two-hour-plus running time feel like a chore, even for arthouse freaks. The general opinion is that it’s good in that it’s ambitious and well-made, but hardly a classic in the way one might think a Coppola late-career magnum opus should be. Though no one expects another Godfather or Apocalypse Now, Coppola has made some good movies since the 70s, and this comes across as merely a huge project without many elements that stick in the imagination.

The central hangup is the fantasy-derived nature of the story. Set in an alternative version of New York called New Rome, the film relies on allegory that is heavily representational right from the start, centered on a Howard Roark-like architect, Cesar Catalina (Adam Driver), whose vision is grand, self-inflating, and at odds with the conventional sensibilities of the powers-that-be, including the mayor, Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), and the city’s reigning billionaire Robert Moses type, Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight). Catalina has visions of greatness that he believes mere mortals cannot comprehend and thus is unremitting in his determination to see them realized, but for the most part the obstacles in his way are tabloidy in texture: sex scandals, inter-family squabbles that turn murderous, and pots of money being spilled all over the place. Apropos the city’s name, decadence is the default narrative mode, and each elaborately designed character stands for some facet of civilizational decline. There are plots and subplots that make sense, but they aren’t coordinated so much as attached to pre-existing literary ideas, including bits of Hamlet and pseudo-hippie tracts like Siddhartha. If the big problem is that the establishment doesn’t want to recognize Catalina’s genius, then there has to be better ways to convey that genius than long, grammatically correct soliloquys. 

It’s thus hard to recommend as a movie, even if much of it is visually fantastic and dramatically intriguing. There’s a lot of money up there on the screen and it shows, and the cast alone may be worth your while just to see how all these actors deal with their weird characters and knotty lines. In addition to the aforementioned stars there’s Shia LaBeouf, Aubrey Plaza, Laurence Fishburne, Jason Schwartzmann, and even Coppola’s sister, Talia Shire (playing Jon Voight’s mother!). If you think of it as a spectacle rather than a film, you’re halfway to deciding whether you might want to see it. 

Opens June 20 in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5068), Marunouchi Piccadilly (050-6875-0075), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063).

Megalopolis home page in Japanese

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