Thoughts on Megalopolis

It's been four decades since iconic American director Francis Ford Coppola first envisioned Megalopolis—a magnum opus that he felt would overshadow even his The Godfather and its sequel. But since its premiere at Cannes last spring, the press has set up the self-financed sci-fi epic as the year's most spectacular dud, a projection that came to fruition when the movie flailed at the box office last weekend.

Regardless of its financial performance and polarized critical reception, Coppola's latest is all about fostering dialogue. And that's exactly how the Pamphleteer approached it. Editor-in-chief Davis Hunt and culture writer Jerod Ra'Del Hollyfield spent the week discussing their often-conflicting thoughts on a film that, adore or despise it, doesn't lend itself well to a 300-word movie review. We've printed the highlights of our correspondence below.

Davis Francis Ford Coppola's long-gestating film was released in theaters last week, and we both saw it. For those who don't know, Coppola is the filmmaker most famously behind Apocalypse Now and The Godfather. His latest movie, Megalopolis, draws comparisons between the fall of Rome and the fall of the United States in a kind of quasi-futuristic, parallel universe vision of America where Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), the ruthlessly pragmatic mayor, squares off with Cesar (Adam Driver), the artistic visionary who leads the Design Authority, over the future of New Rome, a placeholder for New York City.

I won't get too deeply into plot details, but suffice it to say, a right-wing populist movement emerges headed up by Clodio (Shia LeBeouf), the grandson of a rich banker (Jon Voight), and, soon enough, the two former rivals find themselves walking hand in hand off into the sunset against this newfound evil. As the resident Pamphleteer film critic, what were your first impressions of the film?

Jerod The most positive trend in filmmaking now is that we seem to be moving away from the type of naked polemic Oscar-bait movies fueled by Trump Derangement Syndrome and find filmmakers grappling with the ramifications of their party line. We saw it with Civil War and--my favorite film so far this year--The Sweet East.

I wanted Megalopolis to be a definitive return to form for Coppola that was on the receiving end of so much online vitriol because it uniformly countered Hollywood's monoculture. But I also realized about 15 minutes in that it's not a film we should evaluate according to normal criteria. It's a piece of work by an artist with nothing to lose, a vision so strong he'd spend $120 million of his own money to will it into being. I can't think of a comparable movie in the entire history of cinema. It's one of those films that will be a formative experience for anyone who loves the movies. It deserves a conversation that goes beyond its box-office failure.

I'm a firm believer that genius directors need close collaborators so they don't go the way of James Cameron--up their own asses into a world of blue people. This movie was never going to be The Godfather because it wasn't Coppola working with a strong-willed producer like Robert Evans. But Megalopolis is unbridled and unfiltered. There's a joy and awe to that on its own.

After about a decade of the type of sleek professionalism that Netflix content pioneered, I've often wondered if audiences can still surrender themselves to aesthetics in the way they did for movies like Magnolia, Moulin Rouge!, and Tree of Life, or if there's a gut reaction to ridicule that kind of vision because it doesn't operate like an episode of Stranger Things. We need more movies like this--and artworks in general.

Let's talk about the allegorical readings. I think we can agree that, at one level, it's about Hollywood filmmaking. Adam Driver's Cesar is a stand in for Coppola pitted against the hacks like Clodio and the moneymen like Cicero. That's all well and good, but the political angle is what I really want to get at.

There's a strong reading you may agree with that this is an anti-Trump movie. Coppola is all over the place on social media railing against woke-ism one minute and then patriarchy given the day. But, I don't think it's that easy. Cesar, Cicero, and Clodio all have deep flaws that compromise their visions. I see Cicero as an Obama or Eric Adams one minute and as Mike Johson the next, like I see Cesar as part Elon Musk and Bronze Age Pervert while, at times, veering into Green New Deal territory. To me, Clodio is too much of a libertine and androgynous to really be a Trump figure through and through. Coppola has been working on this for 40 years. How much stock do you hold in the film as a direct allegory of MAGA politics?

Davis I enjoyed the movie from an aesthetic perspective and agree that more directors should swing for the fences like this and more producers should indulge their fantasies (within reason). It's probably true that audiences are more reticent to surrender themselves to the aesthetics of a movie like they were in the 60s for movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey back when film had a more prominent position in the culture. Movies rarely reach and achieve the level of cultural resonance that they did in the era of New Hollywood as we've been dominated by the surfeit of "content" dumped onto streaming services, the superhero movie, and the rise of social media.

Today, there are very few theatrical events, and Coppola made this movie expecting it to be (or wanting it to be) this kind of cultural event like his movies were in his halcyon prime. That's how the first half of the movie read to me: an ambitious attempt to recapture the magic of cinema and deliver audiences the lofty ideas that defined that era of filmmaking. To remind viewers of the power that a movie can have.

But what punctured these lofty aspirations for me was the presence of Clodio, Shia LeBeouf's character. As far as a MAGA allegory, I don't know that that's how I'd describe it. Clodio was not Trump. But Clodio was a stand-in for the kind of right-wing populism that Trump represents to liberals like Coppola. Visually and symbolically, though, the way to communicate this to the audience is through the well-worn symbols of right-wing authoritarianism.

In one scene, we see a giant swastika carved into a tree trunk and a Confederate flag waving in the background. At the riot that occurs during the wedding, the rioters wear red hats and wave Confederate flags. Towards the end, as Clodio meets his demise, videos of Hitler and Mussolini flash over the screen. The resolution to the, until then, archetypal Cicero and Cesar conflict becomes one of mere circumstance instead of a mythical "war of ideas," as liberals would have it, as they come together against the scourge of right-wing extremism. I don't think it could be any more explicit.

And to boot, it felt like the introduction of Clodio as a wedge was just tacked on as an afterthought because Coppola was either too unmotivated or too unknowledgeable to untangle the knot he ties at the beginning of the film as we're set to witness a high stakes gambit over what to do with the area of town destroyed by the Russian satellite. Instead, Clodio emerges, Cicero and Cesar set aside their differences—motivated in part by Cesar's marriage to Cicero's daughter, which is bolstered in the narrative by Cesar's claim at one point that the only institution worth saving is marriage—and come together agreeing to let Cesar build his utopia.

We were not entreated to the lofty discourse that Coppola probably imagined before he retired to his trailer and sparked another bowl, but instead, the base ramblings of your stereotypical libtard bottoming out at the only thing between us and our goals are those dastardly right-wing extremists. As an artifact of liberal ideology, it succeeded in showing how shallow and incapable liberalism is of grappling with the questions that Coppola sets forth at the thrilling start of the film.

Jerod The one gaping flaw in the movie I can’t defend is the abandonment of the Russian satellite disaster plotline. It seemed so crucial to the debate between Cesar and Cicero, but ended up being a throwaway. That was the moment I hoped would bring back Coppola circa The Godfather II and The Conversation—the master of script and narrative structure working in the service of the theme. And, it just didn’t happen.

But the hammer and scythe we see on the satellite do lead into the one facet we really haven’t talked about—Coppola’s obsession with time, which has been central to everything from The Godfather and Bram Stoker's Dracula to Jack (David Ehrlich from Indiewire wrote a great piece about this).

For better or worse, this is a film about iconography and its lasting impact. As Laurence Fishburne posits in the voiceover narration: “When does an empire die? Does it collapse in one terrible moment? No, no... But there comes a time when its people no longer believe in it.”

Despite the humor and histrionics, the film sincerely investigates this question. It’s why I feel, barring those achingly obvious hippie-dippy gestures, it’s a deeply traditional film with an impressive understanding of history.

Is New Rome worth saving? Both Cesar and Cicero think that it certainly is. I’m not sure they ever unite to overthrow Clodio. But they do realize that the ideals of this empire are bigger than them and they have a responsibility to serve. In the end, they, unlike Clodio, overcome their pettiness, intrigue, and pursuit of power for personal gain. This Cesar doesn’t pretend he doesn’t want the crown when it’s his deepest desire like Shakespeare’s Caesar. He realizes that power means he can’t be the guarded genius on high anymore who forces utopias on the rest of us. And he owns it.

Did the movie need shots of Hitler, Mussolini, Confederate flags, and the Twin Towers? Probably not. But it works to build Coppola’s trajectory from allegorical antiquity to whatever we want to call this current moment. Admittedly, if a film student did this, I’d die a little bit inside.

In many ways, I find the film quite in line with what passes for heterodox these days: the criticism aimed at pop star valorization and media sensationalism; the way that Aubrey Plaza’s amazing turn as Wow Platinum excoriates legacy media. It makes me a lot more forgiving of that idiotic “human race” epilogue.

And I love that Coppola is a '60s man of the Left who has found himself on the outs with everyone. That’s where we should want our artists to be! Like Cesar says, “And when we ask these questions, when there's a dialogue about them, that basically is a utopia.”

No, Megalopolis isn’t the most focused or fully realized film of the year. But I still have so much more I could say about it. I’m also looking forward to the conversations it will continue to spawn. Actual conversations, not awkward small talk during which people proudly announce whatever middlebrow niche show they are currently binging and say how great it is. Something tells me achieving that lasting impact isn’t going to be the case for many of the movies that will actually be Oscar contenders in the next four months. Or most of the books, series, and albums that still await us this fall.

Megalopolis is now playing in theaters.