Editor’s Note: Freeline Media’s movie critic, Mike Fried, revisits a recent Francis Coppola movie that got a decidedly mixed reaction. Mike’s verdict? Read on!
By MIKE FRIED
MEGALOPOLIS
****
Taking its lead from a Roman power struggle in 63 BC, Francis Ford Coppola’s huge budget Megalopolis might be as much folly as Julius Caesar’s retirement plans, but it is as magnificent as the opulence of Rome.
The story is an unholy mess and suffers from a renegade style of storytelling that is at best disjointed. And yet, in its final half hour, all of the excesses of the previous 90 minutes come to crystal clarity and make perfect sense.
This is the mark of a master filmmaker and that is Francis Ford Coppola; and, as this will likely be his last motion picture, it ought to be treated with reverence rather than the scorn that I have seen for it is Coppola‘s direction and vision that shines most brightly in this piece.
The acting is campy and over the top and like I said, the story is all over the place. But what you see up on the screen is an absolute work of art. Just as the Romans of long ago are dead what is left is the beauty that they’ve left behind, the art, the architecture, the works of literature and the like. And so it goes with this film – forget about the people – witness the spectacle.
The acting was good, but there was nothing special. Adam Driver has Cesar Catalia the Nobel prize winning scientist who has created a miracle substance known as megalon (yay for us Godzilla fans) and who can stop time. He wants to transform New Rome (formally New York City – you know, like New Coke) in the near future and is the dire rival of Mayor Frank Cicero, a very Gus Fring-y Giancarlo Esposito who believes that we need to create jobs, have teachers, etc. In the middle of this comes Cicero’s med school dropout party daughter Julia played by Nathalie Emmanuel, who takes a job and later becomes lover to Cesar. Shia LaBeouf is probably the most interesting character in the peace as Clodio Pulcher, the grandson of Harrison Crassus III, the richest man in the world. Clodio is unhappy with his life and is unhappy living under the thumb of his grandfather so he stages a palace coup writ large by stirring up the masses against the Mayor so that he can attain the power he so gravely deserves – in his mind.
I know a lot has been made about the fact that Coppola said that he hired actors who were not woke because he wanted to be inclusive and such. But in one of the crazier moments he cast pro-Trump advocate Jon Voight to play a Donald Trump like figure and he does so in a not-very-flattering way. One wonders if Voight was aware of this. Finally, one of the most intriguing actors in the piece was Wow Platinum, a society-climbing journalist who is so greedy she marries Hamilton Crassus III for his money. But, despite what I’ve read about her performance, Plaza was just okay. I expected better. The only actor who delivered a steady performance was Laurence Fishburne who played Cesar’s aide de camp and the film’s narrator.
What excels in Megalopolis are not the people in front of the camera but the people behind the camera; that is chiefly Francis Ford Coppola who wrote, produced and directed the film. The cinematography and production design were absolutely first rate, making a distinctly on-location New York City look like New Rome.
In 1982 he undertook a similar folly and created a love story that took place in a scaled-down version of Las Vegas. Did it work? Well, maybe not in 1982 but nowadays, it is considered a glorious film because it was made from the love of cinema that is sorely lacking in many of the new newer filmmakers at work today.
Coppola is surely old school and yet he has always been a visionary as well. And this film has a couple of subtle nods to his previous films. Like each film in the Godfather trilogy, the movie starts with a big bold brash party and there’s a terrific little nod to his war movie in which the poor children are looking at the spectacle of Megalopolis through a chain-link fence, much as the Vietnamese did while watching the Playboy show in Apocalypse now.
For all its failings (and there are many), this is a Fable really not of Rome, but of Hollywood and of Coppola‘s vision that movie making must succeed.
Francis Ford Coppola’s Finis Coronat Opus works so much better than it did on the big screen and is much more coherent. It’s still out there but the entire film really feels like a cohesive whole and I believe that time will make this a classic from a visionary director.
There are many so-called “successful” directors that wish they had Coppola’s vision.
In this regard, this movie is truly One From Coppola’s Heart and it should be watched and re-watched and studied.
WATCH IT!
Michael Fried has no formal training in movies, except having watched over 26,000+ movies — if not more — in his 60-plus years on this planet, starting with Goldfinger as his first cinema experience. He knows what he likes and he knows what he doesn’t like, and it’s quite often different from the conventional wisdom. He knows that the best franchise is Godzilla and he loves action movies and comedies. He has not been nominated for any awards except some boring insurance awards which has no applicability to movies (with the possible exceptions of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and John Cassavettes’ Big Trouble). He is part of a team that won the 1980 SUNY Albany Trivia content by correctly guessing the question, “Who played the president of Klopstockia in Million Dollar Legs?” So he has that going for him, which is nice.
Contact Mike at moviemike3@yahoo.com and mike.fried@yahoo.com.
