America is like the Roman Empire; it's been said before. It's been explored in fiction before, but never before has it achieved the heights of spectacle seen in 2024's Megalopolis. Famously, some would say infamously, financed with over 120 million dollars by its director, Francis Ford Coppola, this movie's a very rare bird; a big budget, purely auteur film. It's a good film though perhaps not as amazing as it needed to be.
I believe there was a concerted effort to bring down this movie. There are multiple reasons why this might be. Coppola has said he went out of his way to cast cancelled actors, including Shia LeBouf, Dustin Hoffman, and Jon Voight. Also, the whole concept of an auteur is odious to the modern crop of internet socialists so they had good reason to want to see this movie fail.
Remember that weird idea promulgating on the internet about how men supposedly think about the Roman Empire at least three times a day or something like that? I feel like that was concocted specifically to diminish interest in this movie. It's the kind of spook story to subtly start getting people's prejudice cords to vibrate. It laid some groundwork for people to consider insights about the Roman Empire to be trivial and, at best, adorable.
Here's how Google's AI explains it when I search for "men think about roman empire":
According to a recent trend on social media, particularly TikTok, many men report thinking about the Roman Empire quite often, with some claiming to ponder it multiple times a week or even daily, leading to a humorous observation that men seem to have a surprising fascination with the ancient civilization; this trend often sparks discussion about the reasons behind this interest, which could include the empire's powerful military image and patriarchal societal structure.
The source is not a formal study but "a recent trend on social media"--The Guardian credits an Instagram influencer named Saskia Cort who asked the women among her 21k followers to ask their male partners how often they thought about the Roman Empire. Fortune refers to the phenomenon as "shocking".
Let's put aside for a moment that 21k is not a very good sample size and the answer to the question would likely be influenced by how it is posed. There wasn't an equivalent survey of women nor was there an earnest explanation of why anyone would think about one of the most crucial chapters in the history of humankind. There was some pushback, like this article in The Spectator. The Spectator is right wing and The Guardian is left wing so it's easy to see how the political sides have oriented themselves on this issue and of course it's a political football because it's entirely unscientific and fundamentally meaningless. Its only purpose is to deride the concept of contemplating the Roman Empire.
Is it really so strange?
Megalopolis reminded me a lot of Star Wars: Episode III, which was also born of its director's contemplation of how a dictatorship can arise from a republic, based on his historical research. Coppola was primarily influenced by the Catilinarian conspiracy, an incident which led to government officials asserting greater authority over the populace. But Megalopolis also presents a narrative about the contrast between progressivism and conservatism, the two poles represented by Adam Driver's character, Cesar Catilina, and Giancarlo Esposito's character, Frank Cicero. Cesar is not Caesar in the Roman Empire sense, that's his name, but obviously it's a name with significant meaning. He's an architect who's developed a new material with which he plans to rebuild the city into a utopia. He also has the ability to stop time.
I really liked this because a progressive leader should be someone who seems like they can or are trying to change the laws of physics. Progressivism is often about trying to progress beyond things long held to be fundamental human nature, as inviolable as a law of physics. As a representative of conservatism, Cicero is less evocative. But despite this, I didn't find the movie unsatisfying. The story becomes much more about the powerful distraction of decadence. Its message is not dissimilar to Joker: Folie a Deux and may be hated for the same reasons.
The character of Vesta Sweetwater, a pop star whose fame is founded on the idea that she's a virgin, is certainly not far-fetched, particularly here in Japan where members of idol groups are punished for any evidence that they've been dating or, worse, been having sex. And just like that phenomenon, the true nature of the obsession with Vesta's purity is itself a fetish, revealed in the less than pure reactions to when the supposed virgin is revealed to be not so much.
On the flipside is Aubrey Plaza's character, my favourite in the film, a TV financial news hostess named Wow Platinum. She's quite comfortable using sex and lies to get what she wants. Plaza's performance and her fantastic costumes really sell the character.
Just like in Bram Stoker's Dracula, Coppola decided to create a sense of a world with costumes more than sets and, on that score, the film is truly magnificent. The editing is wonderful, too, and, as with Dracula and One from the Heart, Coppola masterfully pulls narrative together from the pacing of cuts. He uses transitions of varying speeds, he projects images on others in one way or another. Some people complain the movie is confusing. I didn't remotely find it to be so. I'm starting to think people are losing a degree of cinematic literacy. Or maybe I'm just more accustomed to art films than the average reviewer nowadays.
It is primarily an art film and I'm surprised by indications that Coppola ever thought this was going to be a mainstream success along the lines of his Dracula. For a demonstration of why Megalopolis could never have been Dracula, one need only look to the recent release of Robert Eggers' remake of Nosferatu. Eggers had made art horror films that were kind of known to mainstream audiences. Pairing a director with art movie cred with a classic genre story is a fairly reliable formula and that's exactly what happened with Coppola's Dracula. Star Wars: Episode III will always be a more successful, more famous film than Megalopolis because it was tied to a classic genre story with characters everyone already knows.
I think Megalopolis might have done better with a handsomer lead. All the auteur directors love Adam Driver because he is, quite obviously, the best actor of his generation but I don't think he's much of a box office draw. I'm reminded of David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis which starred Robert Pattinson and also didn't do well at the box office. Pattinson himself isn't much of a draw but you put him with an established character, as in Batman, and the alchemy adds up. But someone with equivalent sex appeal in Driver's place could have made the romance plot with Nathalie Emmanuel more appealing. Maybe an actress capable of a more passionate performance in place of Emmanuel would've helped, too.
I urge you to see this movie for the visual spectacle, to stay for some genuine insight. Hell, see it for cinema.
X Sonnet #1908
As cold as mummies, winter's light arrived.
With morning canes, the walkers jumped a car.
From frozen brains, the talking texts derived.
In telling tales, the sailor lost the bar.
A frosty road arose to windy feet.
Another jaunt enjoined the ragged rat.
A score of years divides from last defeat.
But naval battles churn beneath his hat.
Corrosive snow was froth across the bow.
The mountain path has twisted out of clew.
A dry and hostile wind distorts his brow.
He looks at empty skies where fishers flew.
A hundred leagues from wreck he makes his bed.
And yet there's some who say he isn't dead.
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