What Coppola is most known for, The Godfather, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now, are all from over forty years ago. What has he been up to since, other than the occasional film and becoming more alienated from Hollywood’s system? He has a vineyard and likes to re-edit his past films, with there always being another version of Apocalypse Now (1979, 2001, 2019) to be made. He is dissatisfied with the completion of his work, and as time progresses, Coppola seems increasingly burdened by the legendary status he earned with the success of the 70s and New Hollywood.

These past four decades have also included the slow progression of developing Megalopolis, his latest film that premiered at Cannes in May. One may assume that trying to make the same film happen for years and years might eventually make it out of touch, and there is some sense of this when watching this $120 million epic. Production was halted for many years by the events of 9/11, and Coppola briefly reuses original footage of the debris before production stopped in 2001 in a montage in the film. However, it is difficult to say if Megalopolis or Coppola are able to come to terms with this past and the future, making compelling ideas but not a great film.

With a film in the works for so long, it is no surprise that one of the primary themes of Megalopolis is time. Caesar Catalina, one of the film’s protagonists performed by an animated Adam Driver, has the power to stop time. The other protagonist is a translated New York City called New Rome, creating a postmodern mashup of American modernity with classical Roman antiquity. The background of a scene has a barely audible interview between Wow Platinum, a news anchor, and Hamilton Crassus, a wealthy and extremely powerful banker. We can hear Wow question whether Caesar and his invention, Megalon, a futuristic building material that can create and fix almost anything, will make Crassus antiquated. The interview plays while Caesar briefly visits Wow early in the film; they have an unemotional but physical relationship that will end with Wow’s marriage to the elderly Crassus. 

In the film’s beginning exposition, we learn Caesar has won a Nobel for his invention of Megalon, and his exhibitionist tendencies at a press conference with his rival, New Rome Mayor Cicero, have more and more people talking about his Megalopolis. Megalopolis is Caesar’s idea of an oasis within the city, compared to the Garden of Eden, powered by his miracle material Megalon.

Caesar is a fascinating character who thinks mostly of himself and is the fictional counterpart of Coppola. He desires to create a utopia within the city that will save a dying civilization and empire naively sauntering toward its collapse. If it sounds egotistical, that’s because it is. But Coppola brings a self-critical look at himself through the consciousness of time and its stasis that is contrasted with the youthful energy infused into the form of the film; the present is vanishing and staying the same.

This Megalopolis within New Rome also functions as Coppola’s Megalopolis within cinema. Yet Megalopolis is told as a fable, so (spoilers following) Caesar’s triumph at the end is only a partial success, as those previously in power leading an empire to its collapse remain in power. What the film then really is is a message of hope within the bleak spectacle of New Rome’s fantasies. In its own way it is a Wagnerian film, highlighting the decadence of modernity and transforming Western society’s history into a jumbled myth. Time is progressing in Megalopolis but in all directions.

Mayor Cicero’s daughter, Julia, is a partier and friend of Crassus’ children. Angered by Caesar’s embarrassment of her father at the press conference, she writes an insulting letter to him. She regrets the letter and visits Caesar at his office, trying to take the letter before he reads it. However, he has already read the letter, as the typical tale goes. When Caesar sifts through his mail in front of Julia and asks which letter was hers, it is a near imitation of a scene in the 1948 film The Red Shoes. The situation in The Red Shoes is the same, with a young composer trying to get his letter from the ballet director before he reads it. The ballet director goes through each letter asking which letter is his, and finally arrives at the intended paper only to reveal he has already read its contents. The positioning between the sender and receiver of the mail is similar between films, and there is no doubt that Coppola wishes to evoke The Red Shoes in this scene. It is not just an imitation, but an evocation of Megalopolis as a film within the context of film history, interacting with the legacy of cinema and its future. Megalopolis did not in fact fall out of a coconut tree.

At a celebration for the wedding between Wow Platinum and Crassus at a colosseum-like venue also reminiscent of Madison Square Garden, guests watch chariot racing and various circus acts. Throughout the entertainment, guests ogle and shout “Look at that!” It is a culture of affluence where people depend on watching rather than being a part of something. A musical pop star called Vesta Sweetwater played by Grace Vanderwaal (of all people) shows the shallowness of their entertainment, with her pop persona branded on being a virgin and an example of purity. As she sings, her performance is interrupted by a video on a jumbotron that exposes her virginity as a lie. The illusions of entertainment relied on by the public are shattered; the Vestal Virgins of Ancient Rome no longer exist.

The revelations of Vesta Sweetwater’s fraud also involve Caesar, whose face is faked in the video. Before the lie is discovered and he is confirmed to be innocent, Caesar is arrested and taken to prison. For a brief scene, Caesar lays on the ground of his cell with bruises from the wedding party. A fly buzzes and lands on his arm and then flies away. It seems certain that Caesar’s hopes will not be realized, and the scene reminds of Julien’s contemplations trapped in his cell towards the end of Stendhal’s Le Rouge et le Noir: 

“An ephemeral fly is born at nine o’clock in the morning in the long summer days, to die at five o’clock in the evening. How is it to understand the word ‘night’?

“Give it five more hours of existence, and it will see night, and understand its meaning.

“So, in my case, I shall die at the age of twenty-three. Give me five more years of life in order to live with Madame de Rênal.”

This corresponds with the film’s own contemplations of time. While many characters in Megalopolis mull over time, some with thoughtful statements and others less so, the fly on Caesar must represent a connection to Stendhal’s classic novel and Caesar’s own thoughts. The fly is all that we and Caesar will never be able to understand or experience.

Megalopolis, with its moments that might annoyingly lack any form of subtlety and not land, is a messy but meaningful film. It is a thriving piece of intertextuality that seeks to show contemporary’s cinema potential to continue to expand the arts. Coppola has by no means saved art with this movie; its extremely low domestic box office of $7 million can confirm this. But past its monetary value, Megalopolis is unique enough to remain within our culture and won’t be easily forgotten.