Based or not? Coppola's Megalopolis

“When does an empire die? When the people no longer believe in it.”

Megalopolis, the ambitious and self-funded film, cost Francis Ford Copolla $120,000,000 to complete. He had to sell a stake in his winery to complete the project. A film made without Hollywood funding and the oversight of producers and focus groups will have many tempted to buy a ticket. The question is: based or not based? Let me give you the rundown so you can decide if you want to spend your hard-earned money on this film.

Coppola has given us some of the crowning achievements of Western cinema with the Godfather Series, Apocalypse Now, and The Conversation. Coppola, now at the seasoned age of 85, is in the sunset of his life. It’s quite apparent in the way this film obsesses over time and decay. The film is set in a future America that is akin to the fall of Rome. New York City is dubbed New Rome and it’s a city of lavish inspired by Classicism and Art Deco.

The allegories utilized by the film are quite on the nose. It broaches hamfisted at times, but Coppola does show restraint. He has a message to offer with this film and wastes no time getting to the point. He wants us to feel his disappointment with modern life and the cadre of elites he has rubbed shoulders with, and he certainly achieves this. If you are worried that there will be a Trump Derangement Syndrome element to this film, let me assuage those fears. John Voight’s Hamilton Crassus III seemed to be the most Trumpian figure and he’s certainly not the villain of this film.

The film follows Adam Driver as Cesar Catilina, loosely based on the Catilinarian conspiracy where Lucius Sergius Catilina tried to overthrow the consuls Cicero and Hybrida to take control of the Senate. Adam Driver’s Cesar is an architect with a bold new vision for the city after a Soviet-era nuclear satellite destroys large parts of New Rome. He wishes to construct an Art Nouveau inspired megastructure to the chagrin of Mayor Cicero, played by Breaking Bad alum Giancarlo Esposito. This struggle between Cesar and Cicero has other characters crawling out of the woodwork to take advantage of the chaos.

Hollywood didn’t want to fund this film and some elements of this film reveal why they didn’t want to touch it. The exploration of gender roles is quite based. There are no action-packed girl bosses here. The women rely on their cunning and sexuality to achieve their political power in this future Roman America. Classic feminine guile in politics was a refreshing element of this film. There is even a reference to Vestal Virgins with the elite of New Rome fawning over a teenage pop star who took a virgin pledge. A lurid critique of American celebrity culture, the fashion industry, and the priorities of a culture that has no virtues for their aspiration.

Some elements seemed poorly constructed. The demagogue, Clodio, played by Shia LaBeouf, tries to rile the people against these changes to the city. The succubus whispering in his ear is Wow Platinum, a TV presenter, who will stop at nothing to seize power from Mayor Cicero and Cesar. This Populare element of the film felt misplaced. Clodio’s rhetoric felt more communist than fascist despite the use of swastika and black sun imagery. I suppose Coppola wanted to lampoon them both with maladroit anti-fascist and anti-communist imagery in the film, after all, it was the Soviet satellite re-entering the atmosphere that created the turmoil as the backdrop for all our political intrigue.

The concept of Cesar’s Megalopolis felt a bit underdeveloped. His vision was a utopian one, but it’s never quite explained how his megaproject would change society, apart from the fact that it is constructed with a new kind of material. The whole concept seems more to be a metaphor for Coppola’s desire to leave an enduring legacy with the film. His desire is to leave us with the message that art can endure and inspire change. It is laudable in contrast to the commodification of cinema with endless streams of slop, content for content’s sake. Coppola seems self aware of this with reference to Pygmalion, the sculptor who fell in love with one of his creations which then came to life.