At The Movies: Francis Ford Coppola’s New Rome in Megalopolis crumbles under its own weight

Megalopolis (R21)

138 minutes, opens on Sept 26
★★☆☆☆

The story: In this alternate version of history, the Roman Empire continues to exist in the present day. In New Rome, architect Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) is an inventor and visionary who dreams of creating a utopia free of the hierarchies and corruption of the old. The political establishment, including Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), conspires to bring him down. His daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), ignoring her father’s warnings, falls in love with Cesar.

This sci-fi epic will be remembered as an expensive, self-funded folly, an attempt by a beloved and celebrated American film-maker to make a grand statement resulting in a two-hour-plus marathon of creative indulgence.

Thankfully, writer-director Francis Ford Coppola’s work is not completely unwatchable. Like his well-received horror adaptation Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), Megalopolis is visually interesting. If nothing else, costume designer Milena Canonero could earn awards for her take on Roman dress in the 21st century, which fuses 1950s tailored elegance with gold accents signifying rank and power.

The city of New Rome is, of course, a stand-in for the United States in Coppola’s story. The forces at play in the film are taken from movements one might find in Washington, DC – conservatism versus progressivism, populism versus technocracy and money versus idealism.

There is no shortage of movies and television shows about the shenanigans in the White House and the other pillars of the republic, but Coppola’s approach blends pulpy science-fiction with operatic maximalism.

There is nothing wrong with turning the volume up – William Shakespeare’s Macbeth mixes witches with politics and family drama, and it all works. Incidentally, Megalopolis has more than a few nods to the Bard, including the idea of star-crossed lovers in Cesar and Julia and a couple of single-location scenes that are intended to be theatrical.

This ambitious project could have been something like Denis Villeneuve’s Dune films (2021 and 2024), an epic fantasy inspired by the European lust for oil in the Middle East.

But Coppola’s bombastic storytelling, cluttered narrative threads and lifeless characters – tragically, including that of Driver and Emmanuel’s Cesar and Julia – make this a slog. An orgy scene intended as a voyeuristic glimpse into decadence, but which just looks silly and contrived, stands as an apt metaphor for the project.

Hot take: Coppola’s Roman holiday is a grandiose, Shakespeare-inspired metaphor about American politics, but becomes much ado about nothing.