‘Megalopolis’ review: as mad and memorable as everyone is saying

Adam Driver had the weight of the Star Wars fandom on his shoulder as Kylo Ren in the final film of the Skywalker trilogy. Now, he leads another project as long and eagerly awaited – this time by hardcore film fans. It’s Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, which has made its world premiere at Cannes Film Festival. Coppola, who most famously directed The Godfather trilogy, has had this new scif-fi noir spectacular on his mind since he made Vietnam war film epic Apocalypse Now in the late 1970s. After many false starts since the 1980s, work began on the production in 2019 with Coppola writing, producing and directing an all-star cast that includes Giancarlo Esposito, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf and Jason Schwartzman, Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Fishburne.

Driver plays visionary architect Ceasar Catilina in New Rome, a future city that looks much like New York – his office is at the top of what we know to be Manhattan’s famous Chrysler Building. Ceasar is trying to build Megalopolis – a beautiful utopia – from a material which can make people appear transparent called Megalon. He’s prone to turning up at the launch of building projects, annoying Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul) and quoting Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be?” speech at great length. Oh and, of course, he can stop time.

Plaza, best known for her brilliant turn as eccentric April in Parks and Recreation memorably plays a TV reporter named Wow Platinum. With the best name and role in the film, she’s a fiercely alive woman who, spurned by Ceasar during their affair, marries his uncle, the wealthy Hamilton Crassus III (Hollywood veteran John Voight), she also ends up scheming Hamilton’s downfall with his grandson, Ceasar’s cousin Clodio Pulcher (LaBeouf on delightfully oily and strange form).

On paper, this may sound like a slightly zany sci-fi take on a noir film but Megalopolis has to be seen to be believed. The dialogue and acting is heightened, skewed and bizarre, lurching from fascinating philosophical arguments to nonsense rhymes and non-jokes. The meshing of styles doesn’t always make sense and is sometimes difficult to follow. The visuals, similarly, are often incredible and sometimes ridiculous. There’s a lot of wild CGI but these are complemented by stylish art-deco sets and a range of outlandish costumes, with LaBeouf and Plaza in particular wearing an array of stunning fits. Osvaldo Golijov’s jazzy score is also a high point.

The trouble is – and maybe this was also part of the point, somehow – the whole piece is so uneven, that at times it’s akin to watching a toddler being given free rein as an interior decorator. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you always should. All this being said, Coppola deserves a great deal of credit for ploughing $100million of his own money into making his film, his way. Whether Megalopolis is a critical or commercial success remains to be seen but it’s strange enough to surely have a long life as a cult film.