I can't stop thinking about Megalopolis
On October 1, 2024, I saw Megalopolis for the first time. Nine days later, I saw it again, this time with a friend. I don't remember much of our conversation, beyond me shouting “It's a Fable” over and over, but the next day she sent me a text:
“I'm still confused about whether or not that girl was a virgin.”
Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis (2024) is a lot of things. It is a triumph of auteurism, a spectacle to behold, a matryoshka doll of metaphor and meaning, an attempt at painting a vision towards utopias. It is also a deeply conservative film, one that says some frankly quite unflattering things about the man who put his name on it. The film has my brain in a vice, refusing to let go, as visions of Carthaginian satellites and Adam Driver telling his leading lady to “Go back to the cluuuub” dance in my dreams.
Ostensibly the story about a clash between a brilliant architect’s utopian vision and the pragmatic mayor trying to limit him, the film takes detours including a sequence of tripping out on drugs, January 6th, second unit footage of 9/11, the apocalypse, and Cesar getting shot in the head (don’t worry he gets better) before setting out his grand vision: we need to have a debate. So that's what I'm doing here: poking the film, interrogating it, and hopefully understanding it a bit better myself by the end of this.
During the most famous section of the film, home to the aforementioned “Go back to the cluuuuuub”, Driver's Cesar Catalina asks “...you think one year of... medical school entitles you to plow through the riches of my Emersonian mind?”
As someone with a background in classics, I was familiar with lots of the film's references, but not this. So I took a (shallow) dive into the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, to see what the heck Cesar is talking about here.
To sum up a man's belief and life story in as few words as possible, Ralph Waldo Emerson was a poet and writer whose central belief lies in the fundamental oneness and sovereignty of individuals, but his writing is also very comfortable with the idea that some folks, whether by blood or bootstrap (mostly blood) were better than others.
I say this not to “cancel” Emerson, but as a segue to how the film treats its protagonist. Cesar is generally off-putting, acting like an ass to anyone he deems lesser than him and quoting whatever old author suits his point. To butcher a quote from Hbomberguy, he's the kind of guy who thinks his vision of the world ought to succeed because he knows what a Rubicon is. One of his confrontations with his leading rival, Mayor Franklin Cicero (played by Giancarlo Esposito), is them both making Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel) cite Marcus Aurelius quotations that suit their point. But the film adores him, and he's always positioned as being in the right. When Cesar is booed, it's tragic. When Mayor Cicero is booed, it's comedic.
He can also stop time. Did I mention he can stop time? Put a pin in that.
One of the central conflicts of the last third of the film is Clodio Pulcher (Shia Lebouf) running for city council on an authoritarian populist platform (a reference to a certain president elect), whose far-right ties are so obvious his stump speech takes place on a carved-out swastika and his chief assistant (Jason Schwartzman) bears a Sonnenrad tattoo.
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| c/o American Zoetrope |
Yet their constituency is a veritable rainbow coalition, whose members are motivated primarily by the loss of their homes to Cesar's utopian vision of Megalopolis. Their legitimate concerns are brushed aside by Cesar's grand speech about how we need to debate the future, and that itself is a utopia.
The message is clear: great men (defined as knowing things about ancient history) should be allowed to lead, and their discussions should shape the future, and the rest of us should stand in awe of their genius.
All roads lead to Rome
Megalopolis is not a subtle film when it discusses politics. Its opening monologue compares the American republic to the faltering Roman Republic of the first century BCE, taking its place in a long intellectual lineage (most recently espoused by groups like the Heritage Foundation, to give you a hint where this is going).
A thin coating of Roman paint is splattered across the film. The city of New York is rechristened New Rome, Time magazine is Tempus, the citizens celebrate Saturnalia, Latin is everywhere, and of course the old Soviet satellite that destroys large chunks of New York is named Carthage. The character's names (Caesar Catilina, Hamilton Crassus, Julia Caesar) are the equivalent of a sledgehammer in terms of references to the Late Republic (despite not always entirely mapping). Yet for all of that, it misses the most important part of Rome: the Romans.
The film is fundamentally about the concerns and struggles of the elite. Cesar is the nephew of Hamilton Crassus, the richest man in New Rome, as is Clodio. Before she marries into Money, Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza) is a successful TV anchor. The only not-wealthy people we see are the ignorant masses angry their homes are being demolished.
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| via Wikipedia, "Roman Lime Kiln with Peasants Gambling" by Jan Miel aka the kind of people Megalopolis doesn't care about |
In discussing any creative work, let alone one as deeply personal and auteur-driven as Megalopolis, so I'm going to start by clarifying: I am not claiming Francis Ford Coppola is a misogynist. However, this movie is deeply misogynistic. There are a total of five major female characters in Megalopolis. Going through them in rough order of speaking time we have:
Julia Cicero: A former wild-child, Julia ends up becoming impressed by Cesar’s conception of the world, and becomes one of his biggest advocates. She helps Cesar get his time powers back (more on that later, I promise), they get married and have a child.
Wow Platinum: A TV host and Cesar’s ex-girlfriend, she does everything she can to pursue him, though he rebuffs her. She then proceeds to gain control of the Crassus family finances (marrying and hypnotizing Hamilton and seducing Clodio), until she is killed by her husband, who ambushes her and Clodio with a (prop?) bow and arrow concealed as a “Huge boner.”
Vesta Sweetwater: A supposedly-underage popstar who initially presents a virginal front (Dustin Hoffman’s character pledges $100 million to support her chastity pledge) until a fake video of her and Cesar having sex is released. Afterwards, Cesar is arrested, but acquitted when it is revealed that Vesta is a 21 year old from Indonesia. After this, she brands herself as a more sexual figure, invoking Miley Cyrus in 2013.
Sunny Catalina: Cesar’s deceased wife, whose death (over his infidelity) causes him to lose her and their unborn twins. She is seen entirely through the lens of Cesar’s angst, and it's implied that her passing inspired him to create the miraculous building material of Megalon.
Teresa Cicero (Kathryn Hunter): A loving wife and grandmother who tries to convince her husband of Cesar’s dream. Near the end of the movie, she stretches her arms out to Mayor Cicero, who accepts as they both step into Cesar’s vision, namely a moving sidewalk. (Also Kathryn Hunter is great and I love her so much)
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| She's so great |
All of this points towards a view of femininity being at its best when it is pure and submissive, inspiring the art of great men rather than acting on their own. Julia was a party girl who made out with other women, but then she settled down and started inspiring Cesar (Cesar himself says marriage is one of the most important modern institutions.) Also she quotes Sappho to express her love for a man, which I'm pretty sure is a crime.
Teresa Cicero tries to keep the peace, but by the end of the film chooses to remain silent as her husband continues to argue about Cesar, seemingly resigned to it until the very end. Sunny Catalina seems to be more important dead than she ever was alive. Wow Platinum is a harlot and temptress, seducing men in order to gain their power until the moment she dies (noteworthy here is her Saturnalia costume, portraying her as Cleopatra. Bret Deveraux has already said everything I could about depicting Cleopatra as an exotic sex object, but regardless, it sucks).
With Vesta…without getting too deep into it, the film has some things to say about sexual assault: the famous man who is accused of it is proven to be innocent, and his supposed victim is a liar and an opportunist. Given Coppola didn't want his movie to be woke (which to him involved hiring several actors with allegations against them) and allegations of his own inappropriate behavior…this sucks. I’m just gonna leave it at that.
Megalopolis is about Megalopolis
So…what is Megalopolis? Be Kind Rewind said most of it better than I could, but to sum it up, Megalopolis (the fictional city Cesar is trying to build) is a metaphor for Megalopolis (the movie Francis Ford Coppola has made). Coppola’s career as a filmmaker went from absolutely dominant in the 70s to financial ruin after his attempts to go independent (again, Be Kind Rewind goes into far greater detail than me). Megalopolis (both the city and the film) are intended as pieces to spark a debate about what the future should look like.
It’s also about producing art, and how it changes you. Cesar’s time-manipulation powers are a manifestation of artists being able to see the world differently, and his losing them in prison for that whole falsely-accused-of-statutory-rape thing is more about losing his mojo than anything else. The film’s ending, with Cesar and Julia’s child being able to move after everything is frozen, is indicative of her being able to do so as well, a “Here’s looking at you, kid” to the next generation of filmmakers.
Conclusion
If I had to describe Megalopolis in one word, it would be privileged. It is a film about how freedom and auteurship should be granted to the few, the enlightened, who lead us into the future on their terms and on their rules. It’s about our own fragile democracy and how the Great Men can save it, mollifying the poors while their wives look on and smile.
To paraphrase from something I saw on Twitter and now can’t find: Megalopolis is a triumph of auteurship, and a man taking his vision and putting it on the silver screen. The problem is that the vision is dogshit.
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