Megalopolis, Francis Ford Coppola's long-gestating passion project, opens with a slate that brands it 'A Fable'.
The description goes some way to comprehending the bloated, meandering and often baffling almost two and a half hours that follow.
The legendary director has been working on this film for over four decades. He has reportedly funnelled $120 million of his own fortune into the project, partially by selling his family’s vineyards.
It has finally made its way to the big screen, amid mounting reports of ballooning budgets and chaos on set. So, is it a bold, ambitious epic or an incoherent mess?
We imagine most viewers will lean towards the second option, although there is an entertaining nugget within the madness.
The sci-fi drama draws parallels between modern-day America and the fall of the Roman Empire. It asks the pertinent question - if the status quo continues, can the US empire survive?
The general plot will be hard to surmise, but here goes.
The action is set in New Rome - a retro-futuristic New York - a place full of excess and indulgence for the upper echelons. The city is presided over by the corrupt Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) who butts heads with the influential architect Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), a Nobel-Prize-winning visionary who wants to rebuild New Rome as a sustainable utopia using a magical material he invented called Megalon.
As an aside, Cesar can also stop time, although this superpower has no meaningful significance in the film.
Their animosity is further stoked when Cicero’s reformed party-girl daughter Julia (Game of Thrones star Nathalie Emmanuel in a somewhat thankless role) ends up working alongside, and subsequently falling for, Cesar.
Cesar had been having a clandestine affair with Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza) a power-hungry TV presenter intent on accruing wealth by any means possible. When she sees that their relationship isn’t going anywhere, Wow marries Cesar’s uncle, Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight), a sleazy banker and the richest man in the city, all while scheming to extract his riches with Crassus’ devious grandson Clodio (Shia LaBeouf).
There are also confusing sub-plots involving a "virgin pledge", suspicions over the untimely death of Cesar’s wife and a satellite that has come out of its orbit in space and is hurtling towards the city. None of which amount to anything.
Vestiges of sound ideas are present throughout - the corruptive nature of power, greed, overindulgence and consumerism is explored, as is the importance of working together towards a better society.
However, this crazy jumble of ideas and ideals doesn’t fuse into a coherent whole and the film drags as it chugs along.
To add to the curiously stilted feel of the proceedings, the cast’s approach to the unusual material varies wildly. Improvisation was reportedly encouraged on set, including an entire rendition of Hamlet’s "to be or not to be" soliloquy from Cesar, which perhaps explains some of the unevenness.
Adam Driver wholly commits to the role, bringing his signature intensity and physicality to Cesar, while Nathalie Emmanuel does her best with an unfortunately slight character.
On the other end of the spectrum, Aubrey Plaza goes for broke as the lascivious Wow Platinum and Shia La Bouf chews the scenery as Clodio becoming increasingly deranged as he gallops about the set.
It is confused and confusing, with many leaden lines of dialogue, strangely cheap looking, golden-hour infused cityscapes and bizarrely disjointed editing.
A bewildering cinematic experience that's sure to draw more critics than fans.
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