“Megalopolis”: Coppola's wonderful megalomania

Francis Ford Coppola has always been a man of extremes and when he now presents another huge project at the age of 85, it only seems like the consistent continuation of an unusual working life. As soon as someone has survived the filming of “Apocalypse Now” relatively undamaged, they will probably feel at home in the urban jungle of New York and find their way around much more easily (plus most of “Megalopolis” was shot on green screen anyway).

Adam Driver is building a new New York

But what is this futuristic epic actually about, for which Coppola was able to hire so many stars that just listing the famous names would be the length of an entire review? The focus is on Adam Driver as a super-architect who dreams of realizing his bold vision of a completely new New York. But unfortunately there is a powerful mayor in the form of Giancarlo Esposito who doesn't believe in this plan. The builder then meets a like-minded person in his opponent's daughter (Nathalie Emmanuel), of all people, and together they begin to reshape their world, despite all hostility and intrigue.

New Romans with old names

This is almost a “Babylon New York”, but the cosmopolitan city here is called New Rome and the customs are correspondingly decadent: there is luxury, orgies, gluttony (there is even a chariot race), and as neo-Romans, the characters of course have impressive names , such as Caesar Catiline (Driver), Cicero (Esposito), Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight) or Fundi Romaine (Lawrence Fishburne). But before I start listing them, I'd rather stop and devote myself to the question of what vision Coppola wanted to create with this early work, which is bursting with vitality.

Hamlet Driver

The director himself doesn't build a city, but he is an imaginative cineaste, which you can see in his work: he works with many different stylistic devices and at the same time invites you to take a walk through film history. The different settings often give the impression of a stage play and that Coppola only the best is good enough in this respect is shown right from the start when he has Driver recite the famous Hamlet monologue “To be or not to be”. This will be an unforgettable moment – and who wouldn't want to see Adam Driver as the Danish prince straight away? Other characters even speak Latin at times and throw around quotations from classical literature.

Between Trump and Mussolini

You may be confused at first, wondering what it all means, but it soon becomes clear that Coppola has a lofty goal. He creates a picture of our time and, above all, of the American present: enormous social gaps, corruption, manipulative media, 12-year-olds who shoot people, artificial pop stars, and of course allusions to certain people should not be missing: Shia LaBeouf plays a power-hungry career changer politics, whose gestures and rhetoric are reminiscent of Trump and also incite the population to riots and revolts until everything threatens to sink into chaos. But his end brings back memories of Benito Mussolini.

Ode to art

This film offers a beacon of hope, because “Megalopolis” is at the same time an ode (and according to the subtitle, a “fable”) to the artist and creative person who uncompromisingly pursues his goals in order to transform dreams into reality. The fact that constructive imagination can actually achieve incredible things becomes more than clear in Caesar: the architect has almost magical abilities, can make time stand still at will and has invented a miracle material. Time seems to have stood still for us too, because it is truly astonishing that this variety of topics could be accommodated in just 138 minutes.

Luckily Coppola suffers from megalomania – in German: delusions of grandeur – because otherwise he would certainly not have dared to take on this project. The result proves him right: in his film he expresses his belief in a better future and with “Megalopolis” leaves his very special – and very idiosyncratic – legacy to humanity (and to cinema).

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