MEGALOPOLIS ★★★ 138 mins By now, Francis Ford Coppola ’s Megalopolis has overworked its lore. The 40-year battle to realise its vision; the $US120 million used to self-finance it; the studio indifference that greeted its first screening in March, where it failed to land a buyer; the early festival reviews extolling its oddness. Like the film, it’s a bit much.
Adam Driver as renowned architect Cesar Catilina and Nathalie Emmanuel as Julia in Megalopolis. If his late wife Eleanor Coppola were alive to make Megalopolis’ Hearts of Darkness equivalent, we might yet have a film that could get beyond the hype. But, now 85, Coppola’s first new film since 2011’s art-horror Twixt is a neo-noir caught in its own baggage.
Megalopolis is a film about the fall of the US empire, told as a modern Roman fable. You’ll get this straight away, due to the opening title cards setting the locale as “New Rome 3AD” and a subtitle labelling the film: “A Fable”. Also, because everyone in this film has a Caesar haircut.
Even in sci-fi, Coppola’s interests skew more bureaucratic than esoteric. Defined by its future-retro aesthetic – it’s a place where journalists wear press tickets in their hats and everything looks like the Chrysler Building – New Rome is a city in trouble. Battling for its soul is Cesar Catilina, played by Adam Driver, an architect-visionary with grief and a drinking problem.
Catalina has stumbled on “megalon”, a building resource that brings his u.