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Keep reading for alternate takes from Giles Edwards and El Rob Hubbard
DIRECTED BY: Francis Ford Coppola
FEATURING: Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jon Voight, Giancarlo Esposito, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Lawrence Fishburne
PLOT: In mythical New Rome, inventor Caesar Catalina can stop time and has invented some kind of miracle substance called “Megalon,” but demagogues and rivals scheme to ruin him.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Megalopolis is a movie conjured by an 85-year old film genius that feels like it could have been made by a fresh film school graduate, if someone had given the kid $120 million dollars and tasked him with making an Important Statement. And I mean this all as a compliment: Coppola here is as brash, fearless, ambitious, and pot-dazzled as a twenty-four-year old tyro with stars in his eyes. Acting your age is for politicians, not filmmakers. The resulting movie is a bizarre mashup of Titus (1999), Southland Tales (2006), and Metropolis (1927), and if the entire city of New Rome constantly glows with a golden hue, it’s because the movie’s bananas.
GREGORY J. SMALLEY COMMENTS: Francis Ford Coppola conceived of the idea for Megalopolis as early as 1977, so you would think he would have had some of it plotted out already when it came time to sell his winery and finance the film in 2019. But, by all appearances, he decided to throw away whatever notes he had made in the previous decades and just wing it. The movie is plotted like a Shakespearean epic—when it’s plotted at all. The basic idea is that America today is a lot like Rome as it neared the end of the Republic and slid into the grandest despotism the world had ever seen. The solution, in Coppola’s view? We need more dialogue, because, as Caesar says, ” when we ask these questions, when there’s a dialogue about them, that basically is a utopia.” Also, it might help to have the unexplained ability to stop time, and to develop some new material called Megalon, which can do everything from design evening gowns for virginal pop stars to form the basic building blocks of the conveyor belts in an inner city Garden of Eden. Sounds like a job for Elon Musk—no, wait, we were shooting for a utopia.
Cesar Catilina (Driver) is some kind of hard-drinking Nobel Prize winner/architect who sleeps with socialites and reporters. Franklyn Cicero (Esposito) is the no-nonsense mayor who hates Cesar because he’s not pragmatic enough; his bright daughter Julia (Emmanuel) wants to sleep with Cesar (and support his utopian dreams). Cesar’s uncle, Crassus (Voight), is the richest man in New Rome, with all the altruistic humility that position implies. He marries entertainment reporter Wow Platinum (Plaza), who has also been sleeping with Cesar. Crassus’ son, the brilliantly named Clodio Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: MEGALOPOLIS (2024) – THREE TAKES