Visionary inventor and architect Cesar Catilina hangs over futuristic New York. The fact that he can stop time prevents him from falling from the highest skyscraper. And time seemed to stand still in the entire film Megalopolis, which director Francis Ford Coppola dreamed of for almost half a century.
This fable, as the subtitle of the $120 million work reads, wants to talk about today and the future. But the past is catching up with her more than she would like. Czech cinemas have been screening Megalopolis since last Thursday.
The film works with the past constantly and deliberately. The city that Adam Driver, in the role of Cesare Catilina, wants to change for the better with the help of special technology is a little New York, a little Metropolis from the 1927 sci-fi classic of the same name, as well as a sort of futuristic version of ancient Rome. And the whole picture – in addition to having elements of a fable and everyone in it being simplified to archetypal beings – seems like a variation on some rather bizarre tragedy by William Shakespeare.
Francis Ford Coppola is one of the creators who have been protesting against today’s Hollywood for a long time. In the 70s of the last century, his generation of the so-called New Hollywood she brought to American cinema with fresh ideas, an author’s approach and a cinematic language inspired by European trends.
Now, as if a long-established author of classics Apocalypse whether Godfatherwhich belongs to the film canon, he wanted to defy Hollywood. And work completely freely.
Megalopolis is the obvious last point in the career of the eighty-five-year-old man, who had to sell part of his vineyards for the sake of the film in order to invest $120 million in it from his own pocket, which translates to almost 2.8 billion crowns.
Aubrey Plaza plays the ambitious TV star Wow Platinum. | Photo: American Zoetrope
Thanks to this, Coppola did not have to look left or right while filming. The result is a similar battle with windmills to another project decades in the making: director Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. After all, he is also now preparing a film that he does not want to finance even partially with Hollywood money.
Both Quixote and Megalopolis, which coincidentally star Adam Driver, are intensely personal works. The hero can easily be read as the creator’s alter ego.
Cesar Catilina wants to change the face of a corrupt, morally rotten city, but the mayor vilifies him for killing his wife, and others plot against the protagonist.
Megalopolis is full of sly villains, tense emotions, and visually extravagant scenery. Even beautiful women, of whom I can easily turn out to be a femme fatale.
Coppola deliberately flips through a book of film techniques – from ancient and endearingly clumsy, like calendar tickets marking the passage of time, through dividing the canvas into multiple images in the spirit of 70s cinematography, to opulently recolored “baroque” 80s and digital scenes reminiscent of hallucinations, which the computer screen saver suffers from sometime since the turn of the millennium.
Czech cinemas have been showing the movie Megalopolis since last Thursday. | Video: Film Europe
He clearly did a lot of it on purpose. Megalopolis is supposed to be a somewhat tacky dystopian world that can only be saved by an architect with resources and vision.
It’s a remarkable paradox. Coppola seems to stand against the system and its numbing effects on the one hand, but on the other hand he advocates for a strong industrialist who is the only one who can take action against injustice.
Coppola is one of the artists who, like his peer Martin Scorsese, criticizes comic films as one of the examples of where Hollywood has evolved. At the same time, despite the formally completely unconventional procedures, which are far from mainstream spectacle, he has now created a similarly banal narrative about the clash of good and evil.
While the better and more ambitious comic pictures about influential millionaires with advanced technology tend to be raw, realistic and critical of the protagonists, Megalopolis puts a similar character on a pedestal.
However, Cesar Catilina is not Batman, rather he resembles a “visionary” of the Elon Musk type, an explosive mixture of exaggerated ego and ambition, which can be seductive and intoxicating, but also dangerous.
Megalopolis can be viewed similarly. Like a wondrous relic of gigantic dimensions and intentions, in which Latin is spoken, Shakespeare is sometimes – sometimes literally – quoted, but at the same time it is only a fever dream doomed to soon fade from memory.
Coppola works with simple characters, lots of symbols, motifs of betrayal and love known from tragedies, but he renounces the classic narrative structure. Rather, it offers the audience a series of scenes that want to be intense, even overwhelming.
Cesar Catilina played by Adam Driver (right) resembles an Elon Musk-type “visionary”. On the left is Nathalie Emmanuel in the role of Juliet. | Photo: American Zoetrope
Megalopolis is not an alternative to contemporary Hollywood. Rather, the embodiment of cinematography from a kind of alternative reality, where the film was never created and where some of its procedures are only occasionally used randomly.
Otherwise, we watch a mixture of ancient, often theatrical dialogues and gestures, which nonetheless have a certain, if somewhat perverse, impact.
Sadly, this feat says more about the visionary than his vision. Apart from simple allegorical truths, we learn almost nothing about the city itself and its functioning. We can just enjoy the trifles here and there, like the fact that the Madison Square Garden sports hall has become a kind of futuristic coliseum.
Ambitious creators often put everything in their hearts into their debut. Coppola gave his all in what is likely to be his last film. Megalopolis is a geyser of ideas and imagination. A geyser where the difference between the subtle and the banal is blurred. A world unto itself. However, the question remains as to who will be able to enter it and will like to stay in it.
Film
Megalopolis
Screenplay and direction: Francis Ford Coppola
Film Europe, Czech premiere on October 17.
Cesar Catilina and Megalopolis: A Cheeky Look at Coppola’s Time-Stopping Venture
Ladies and gentlemen, gather around as we dive into the dazzling world of Megalopolis, the latest brainchild of cinematic genius Francis Ford Coppola! This magnificent endeavor has taken nearly half a century to form, much like that elusive perfect soufflé—only to be served in a futuristic, dystopian New York rather than a fancy French restaurant!
Now, our protagonist, Cesar Catilina, played by the ever-charming Adam Driver, spends more time teetering on the brink of skyscrapers than I do on the edge of my sanity when trying to make sense of modern art. Thanks to his ability to stop time—frankly, a talent I could use in rush hour—he remains safely suspended as he tackles the corruption of this morally dodgy metropolis.
The Visionary’s Vision
Megalopolis isn’t just your run-of-the-mill blockbuster; it’s a $120 million labyrinth of lofty ideals, complete with archetypal characters that, like your average dinner party guest, can be described in one word: simplistic.
The film is essentially a love letter to the past, dressed up in futuristic technicolor while slipping easily into the role of a Shakespearean tragedy. I mean, who could resist a mixture of Shakespearean drama, ancient Roman architecture, and a sprinkle of Metropolis nostalgia? Sounds like a recipe for cinematic disaster, no? Yet, here we are!
A Last Hurrah for Coppola?
At the ripe age of eighty-five, it appears our dear Coppola is determined to leave an impression—even if it means selling off a stake in his vineyards. For those keeping score, that’s now 2.8 billion crowns of his own pocket going into this project. It’s almost as if he wants to famish the world of fine wine just so we can bathe in the glorious spectacle of his rebellious filmmaking!
Coppola, the wizened sage of New Hollywood, has been battling the corporate behemoth that is modern-day Hollywood for decades. One can only imagine him hurling his director’s chair in frustration every time he sees a superhero movie—or perhaps he simply puts it on a pedestal while pondering deep thoughts about humanity. (It’s hard to say, really.)
Conflicted Messages
But wait! Here’s where the plot thickens like a British pudding! While he sets out to critique the vapid nature of modern blockbusters, he oddly rallies around a wealthy industrialist who embodies a dangerous blend of ambition and ego—let’s call him the Tesla-meets-Macbeth of our time. To be honest, if I had a dollar for every time a film tried to dissect the motives of a morally ambiguous millionaire, I could fund my own disastrous project! Oh, wait. I’m an artist too!
Cesar Catilina might just be a modern-day Elon Musk—if Elon were a shady character trying to save the world while simultaneously lining his own pockets. It’s a narrative as deliciously confusing as a pop quiz in a philosophy class.
A Cinematic Curiosity
As we immerse ourselves in this visual carnival, we’re served a series of disjointed moments, akin to flipping through a family photo album that inexplicably includes a cat in a sombrero. It’s a collection of scenes designed to leave us breathless, bewildered, and wondering, “What on Earth just happened?”
Ultimately, Megalopolis is not an antidote to the Hollywood machine; rather, it’s a surreal artifact from an alternate dimension—a place where conventional narratives go to die, replaced instead by profound poetic chaos. It’s like watching your novels come to life but then realizing they’re set in a parallel universe where the plot’s just a tad off-the-wall.
Final Thoughts
So, should you venture to your nearest Czech cinema to catch Megalopolis? I’d say, bring a friend, some popcorn, and perhaps a few philosophical questions for good measure! You might find it overwhelming. You might find it frustrating. Or you might just chuckle and think, “Well, at least I got out of the house!” Whatever the case, this piece of cinematic ambition illustrates one thing quite clearly: even in a city ruled by chaos and ambition, it’s essential to pause, breathe, and—dare I say it—stop time just long enough to enjoy the absurdity.
