Francis Ford Coppola’s MEGALOPOLIS [review]

If you weren’t around in the Sixties, you may have a difficult time getting into Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis.

In many ways it’s the ultimate Sixties movie.*

We remember the conventional cinematic successes of the Sixties -- The Sound Of Music, Lawrence Of Arabia, the James Bond movies -- but the era was filled with many experimental films that challenged the way we told stories.

I’m not referring to underground films such as those by Andy Warhol or Kenneth Anger but mainstream releases that left audiences reeling at what they saw.

And not because of violence or nudity (though that existed aplenty) but in the way stories were constructed and filmed and edited.

You need to be a pretty dedicated student of film these days to even know of, much less seen films like Putney Swope, Medium Cool, Goodbye Columbus, The Sterile Cuckoo, or Castle Keep.

And those five films represent just a fraction of the 1969 slate of releases; all through the decade a number of filmmakers -- newcomers and old hands at the business -- tried breaking out of the conventional story telling mode.  Even a relatively conventional racing drama like Grand Prix experimented with splitting the screen into several images showing details of a scene as it unfolded.

Add to this the willingness of corporations to use exciting and unconventional audio-visual presentations at major events like the 1962 and 1964-65 World Fairs or Expo 67, and one sees contemporary filmmakers have failed to build on the explosive innovation of that era.**

Coppola is of that era.  From 1960-63 he scruffed around doing various odd jobs for low budget studios, slapping together nudie-cuties for sleazy producers, re-editing foreign sci-fi films for Roger Corman (and trying to help him make sense out of the gawdawful mess The Terror).

Corman rewarded Coppola with a chance to direct Dementia 13, a rather conventional but not awful low budget horror film in 1963.  Corman parlayed this into the independent feature You’re A Big Boy Now (1966), then convinced Warner Brothers to allow him to do a genuinely eccentric version of the musical Finian’s Rainbow (1968) followed by the dour road movie The Rain People (1969).

Coppola’s career seemed on the verge of stalling out following three lackluster big studio releases but being Italian he ended up on the short list of possible directors for The Godfather (1972) and from there the gravy train pulled out of the station with him aboard.  In short order he made The Conversation (1974), The Godfather Part II (1974), Apocalypse Now (1979) then settled down for a series of quality but conventional movies from 1980 to 1997.

After a brief foray into producing TV shows, Coppola spent the next quarter century chasing film projects that went nowhere (except litigation) or failed to connect with audiences.

Megalopolis is reportedly his big, long planned masterpiece from 1977, a cautionary tale about the future of the United States (ironically the film finds itself nearly overtaken by real events so it becomes less of a prediction and more of a commentary on current events).

Problems plagued pre-production for decades, scuttling an attempt to make it in 1989, a revitalized effort in 2001 just before 9/11, and the covid pandemic nearly sinking the project once and for all just as it started building momentum in 2019.

One senses Coppola -- now 85 and recently widowed from wife of 61 years, Eleanor (who gets a dedication credit in the film) -- felt mortality breathing down his neck and decided to give it his all for one last big epic production.

God bless him for that.

Megalopolis has its flaws, parts of it seemed hurried and rushed, and there are rough parts of the plot that should have been smoothed out, but it is a profound film, a philosophical film, a personal film but best of all, a film that dares come down squarely on the side of hope and progress.

Lord knows we need that now.

Inspired by events in Roman history, Coppola moves it up to a modernized Rome, a New Rome in place of New York city.

One of the fatal flaws in contemporary American filmmaking is an insistance to tell every story in a naturalistic (i.e., “realistic”) manner even if it’s a fantasy such as Lord Of The Rings or a marvel superhero movie.

Where Coppola harkens back to his Sixties roots is that he makes no effort to convince us of the reality of his story (the way he did with The Godfather movies, for example) but rather renders it as a fable.***

This is where not actually living through the Sixties may hinder modern audiences from appreciating the feast Coppola lays out before them.  Much of what he lays out before them is not meant to be taken literally but as short hand for larger ideas.

Coppola doesn’t merely draw from Roman history but melds a big hunk of Ayn Rand onto his story as well, only a mirror image of Rand’s sociopathic Objectivism in the form of a far more compassionate and self-disciplined quest for social betterment.  He doesn’t merely dance on Rand’s grave but builds a disco above it and tells the DJs to play “Take Me To Funky Town” every night.

Megalopolis has been called a film that’s little more than a series of philosophical discussions, but I fail to see that as a detriment.  To that degree it resembles Alphaville (1965), Jean-Luc Godard’s surreal private-eye-cum-sci-fi movie.  Like Alphaville it focuses on who controls who and their means of doing so.

To that end it’s unnerving because as noted, it now finds itself overtaken by reality, with techbros and theobros teaming up with thoroughly despicable corrupt politicians to fight for power and control rather than serve the needs of the people.

Coppola provides no easy answers.  He’s clearly no lover of the common rabble, but he is willing to accept everyone who wants to make a creative step toward the future.

Contemporary audiences seem to have a hard time wrapping their minds around Megalopolis, and this may be one of those films that will need to wait for generations to come to be appreciated.

On the other hand -- harkening back to its Sixties mentality -- it may turn into something like The Great Gatsby:  A major cultural touchstone for anyone who lived in that era, a distant befuddling object for those who come after.

I hope not.

© Buzz Dixon

*  Okay, I’ll grant you 2001: A Space Odyssey and Easy Rider crowd it for that title.

**  It could be argued that as conventional filmmaking techniques became more efficient and accessible, the daring resourcefulness of filmmakers of that era when forced with tight budgets and schedules prompted a greater willingness to go for broke instead of playing it safe.

***  Along those lines, it could be compared to Walter Hill’s Streets Of Fire (1984) which makes no effort to depict anything realistically but rather relies on archetypes to carry its story – and would probably make one helluva double feature with Megalopolis.