'Megalopolis' is Francis Ford Coppola's defining artistic statement

by Mitchel Green - September 30, 2024

| mitchelgreen34@gmail.com source: The Movie Database

It has been over 50 years since Francis Ford Coppola perfected the classical Hollywood style that has remained a dominant force in mainstream American cinema in the decades since. “The Godfather” has been the standard bearer for that type of filmmaking since its release, and although Coppola has returned to the well on a handful of occasions, his best work over the decades since has been more interested in aesthetics than in standard narrative storytelling. In a live-streamed Q&A before an early IMAX screening of “Megalopolis,” Coppola mentioned his desire to find his “style” as an artist after trying his hand at a few different genres and aesthetics to great success. It’s clear that, no matter what critics or audiences felt Coppola’s style should be, he found himself in the total artifice of “One From The Heart.” The digital revolution of the last few decades has only helped him better realize his dream of complete artistic control.

“Megalopolis” is, at its core, about creative control. That is evident in the nature of its production as a completely self-financed big-budget film where Coppola is beholden only to himself, in its artificial digital look and the fantastical, fabricated world Coppola creates from scratch, and in its narrative as Cesar Catalina feels the only way he can build what he believes is a better world is by everyone else getting out of his way and allowing his unmatched creativity to save his city’s populous from itself. Much of the film’s messiness comes from this last bit, but so too does much of its intrigue.

Cesar is a Coppola stand-in, and the film reveres Cesar as a visionary and the savior of humanity but simultaneously shows how this can create a power-obsessed, self-indulgent monster who may only be doing this for personal glory. To be clear, the film does play this both ways, and Coppola allows the audience to come to their own conclusions about which side of this dichotomy the film leans toward. Whether by consciously refusing to make things clear or getting lost in the contradictions a screenplay rewritten hundreds of times over several decades is inevitably going to have, the film is better for not giving us answers.

Above all else, Coppola wants to show you something you’ve never seen before. Like every great filmmaker, he understands that film’s power comes not from its dramatic prowess but from its manipulation of image and sound to provoke feeling. He’s working on an entirely emotional level, and while the film may fall apart intellectually, it is incredibly moving. The overly mannered performances, the theatrical dialogue, and the avant-garde-inspired editing work because it is in service of something completely earnest. It’s not trying to show off, it’s trying to express abstract feelings that couldn’t be expressed via naturalism. Coppola has put every bit of his heart and soul into this film and believes in himself to pull it off and his audience to accept it on his terms.

Not everyone is going to accept it on his terms. This has always been true, but especially today, a closed-minded narcissism pervades mainstream American audiences. Everything has to fit what they want or it’s terrible. It’s the reason a film like this has to be self-funded. When the industry chases trends instead of setting them, the audiences have all the power. Coppola wants to return that power to the artists. When Cesar says he wants to start a dialogue and he wants everyone involved, this is not some call to both-sides some political issue. This is Coppola trying to reach out and show the average moviegoer what they’re missing if they refuse to engage with art in a way that isn’t all about them.