Megalopolis

Francis Ford Coppola's off-the-wall passion project is most assuredly not for everyone... possibly most people. But it's visually dazzling and never less than compelling.

When I was a full-of-himself young man, I met the legendary screenwriter William Goldman, who was chums with my dad going back to college. Sitting in his Manhattan apartment as I was about to start studying cinema at NYU, he asked me about my taste in movies and I told him I favored films that were visually impressive over ones with good stories but not much flair.

He nodded patiently, if somewhat disappointingly. Of course, the man who preached that narrative structure is the most important think in filmmaking — “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “All the President’s Men,” “The Princess Bride” — knew better than I.

Fortunately, my own tastes matured, and I was fortunate to maintain an email correspondence with Goldman for some years.

I wonder what he would make of Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis,” a passion project he’s been itching to make since the 1980s. He was finally able to do so only by self-financing its $120 million production himself, leveraging his stake in a successful winery enterprise.

Not much, I’d wager.

From a narrative structure standpoint… there really isn’t one. It’s an off-the-wall, hard to follow fable that’s both an indictment and celebration of the American dream.

It posits New York City as New Rome, a decaying urban empire struggling between whether to renew itself through a bold visionary who wants to remake the city anew and the entrenched powers happy to wallow in holding onto influence, or stealing others’.

Some will call it political, and to an extent I think it is, but Coppola — who wrote, produced and directed — is more hopeful and open-minded than our current poisonously partisan environment. Cesar Catilina, played by Adam Driver, exhorts the people that they need to have a conversation about the future, one in which everyone participates.

It’s one of the most visually dazzling movies you’ll ever see. Through a combination of complex sets, costumes and CGI, Coppola paints in every corner, a sumptuous feast for the eyes — supported on the aural spectrum by Osvaldo Golijov’s music, a mix of powerful classical melodies and disturbing atonal sequences.

Several times, the screen will split into three completely different visions that move and dance separately, and it’s a sensory overload. This is the sort of movie you have to see several times to get a full grasp of it.

It’s 138 minutes long, but never drags. Even as there were sections where I was entirely baffled at what was going on — like what appears to be a bombing attack from a Soviet-era satellite that destroys Catilina’s project in the center of New Rome — I never felt less than compelled to keep watching.

Coppola has made what is probably the most expensive experimental film in history, on his own dime. He toys with the conventions of filmmaking, plucking our expectations and then turning in another direction. There’s even a point where Catilina breaks the fourth wall, seemingly conducting an interview with a real journalist in the audience.

(Full disclosure: I was asked to perform this role for the Indianapolis press screening; other journalists did the same in dozens of simultaneous screenings across the country. Considering it a potentially unique experience for those present, I agreed. Shortly before the event I was offered a stipend for this service, which I declined. Based on the feedback I received from audience members, it was an arresting, memorable moment.)

Catilina is a scion of the uber-rich Crassus family, led by patriarch Hamilton (Jon Voight), who has undue influence over city politics, declaring that the best thing about money is “You can scare people.” Chief among them is the mayor, Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), an old-school power broker type happy to stoke the ruling class’ debauchery if it keeps him in office.

Catilina leads a quasi-governmental agency that is tearing down old sections of New Rome to build his utopia, Megalopolis, an energy-sustainable Eden where every person will have their own garden and transportation. For this he is using Megalon, a metallic substance he created years earlier, winning the Nobel Prize.

(By my estimate, Catilina’s city-within-a-city could house perhaps 6,000 people using the parameters he’s laid out, which if New Rome has the population of NYC would leave about 99.93% of residents on the outs.)

Catilina and Cicero are old enemies, dating back to the mysterious death of Catilina’s wife, for which Cicera unsuccessfully prosecuted him back when he was the D.A. Catilina considers the mayor a hopeless relic of the old ways, happy to act as the effective slum lord of millions.

With a vaguely Nero-esque haircut, omnipresent black cape and imperious manner, Driver’s Catilina is an oddly charismatic figure, a visionary who wants to do good works for the common people he disdains, a heroic striver who is indifferent to being portrayed as the villain.

“Don’t let the now destroy the future,” he intones. He also has the mysterious, never-explained power to stop time.

Early on Cicero’s daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), part of the coterie of wealthy youngsters enjoying a never-ending party on the town, finds herself intrigued by Catilina and begins to fall for him. She acts as go-between for the two men, her loyalty often in doubt by each, and it’s through her eyes that we see much of the story play out.

Too many other supporting characters to name, but the always-entrancing Aubrey Plaza stands out as Wow Platinum, the sensationalizing business TV network “Money Bunny” who starts out as Catilina’s secret mistress, then turns into a major power broker when she snares Daddy Crassus as her mate.

Shia LaBeouf also makes a mark as Clodio Pulcher, Crassus’ grandson and Catilina’s resentful cousin, a gender-bending crude opportunist who sees an opening to whip up the crowd against both Catilina and Cicero, and thereby elevate himself among the mob.

Laurence Fishburne plays Fundi, Catilina’s confidante/driver/only friend, who’s watchful and protective; Dustin Hoffman is Nush, the mayor’s screechy background fixer; Talia Shire plays Catilina’s disdainful mother; Jason Schwartzman and D.B. Sweeney are bureaucratic flunkies; and Grace VanderWaal plays Vesta, a virginal singing superstar who briefly occupies the center of the movie, for reasons never made entirely clear.

“Never entirely clear” is as good a summation of the storytelling in “Megalopolis” as there is.

The dialogue is stilted and arch, freely borrowing whole passages from Shakespeare, Marcus Aurelius and various classical philosophers. A lot of events happen, often without a sense of meaning or consequences, such as a major character sustaining deathly injuries, which disappear a few scenes later.

And yet I defy you not to be blown away by the cinematic splendor of this movie. There are dozens of moments that feel instantly iconic, like a statue of Justice seeming to stumble and melt out of sheer weariness at her duty; or Catilina and Julia, atop a skyscraper clock that offers a commanding vantage of the city, peering through telescopes while swapping out colored glass to alter their perception.

“Megalopolis” is a huge, confusing, splendid bit of grand chaos.