Postmodernism often sounds like a swear word in the contemporary context – the fading of value boundaries, the scepticism that often turns into a disbelief in nothing at all, the extreme subjectivism and individualism, Nietzsche’s famous will to power. All this often leads to madness. Postmodernism is a rather mad affair. It is the disease of our times.
However, there are people who like postmodernism. These are ambitious people who know their own worth, who think they can be their own reference point and thus keep themselves balanced in a state of instability. They think that they can manage not to go mad without having a foundation under their feet.
Is Francis Ford Coppola? I don’t know. But his latest, and most probably his last, film Megalopolis (2024) is certainly not lacking in postmodern ambition. The director is now 85 years old and should have accumulated not only professional but also life experience. But Coppola seems to have entered old age in deep thought.
If real life were a schoolroom, we could clap the director on the back and praise him for his knowledge of classical and modern philosophy and literature, of ancient history, and for his ability to weave them into the film’s plot. But if we are not schoolchildren, if we have been out of school for a long time, we expect from a work of art not just a jumble of ideas, but the fulfilment of an idea in a kind of totality.
In Magalopolis, it is as if the director wanted to put everything he had read in his life into two hours. As if he wanted to have grasped the essence of everything by the time he reached the sunset of his life. As if he wanted to write a testament. A will so long that the scroll would stretch across the whole room.
This film is in the dystopian genre, i.e. it depicts a future world that is collapsing, and it is not short of big ideas. From the memorised recitation of the ancient Roman philosopher Marcus Aurelius to Hamlet’s famous monologue on existence, from the many allusions to the history of ancient Rome to the reality of modern-day America.
The protagonist of the story is Caesar Catalina (Adam Driver), the visionary architect of a New Rome (similar to modern New York). Caesar wants to create a utopian city where everyone lives in harmony and constantly learns from each other. His visions are big, but his mental state is not entirely stable – he is manic, drug addicted and suicidal. And… he can stop time. Caesar is like Coppola himself – a great director who will sacrifice everything for an idea (back in the 1990s, Coppola almost bankrupted the film studio he had founded), who, like a Deus ex Machina, watches the world like a film set from the balcony of his box.
Caesar, of course, has his opponents – the Mayor of New Rome, Cicero (Ginacarlo Espozito), who, although unable to win the sympathy of his electorate and rule the city, takes a more down-to-earth approach and does not believe in grand utopias. The journalist Vau Planinum (Aubrey Plaza), abandoned by Caesar, desperately tries to win back his attention, but fails miserably and starts doing dirty work. Caesar’s cousin Clodius Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf) tries to subdue the crowd and seize power because he envies Caesar’s talent and power.
There are also admirers. Julie Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel), the mayor’s daughter, falls in love with the great architect for his big ideas. Uncle Hamilton Crassus (Jon Voight) supports him financially. His loyal assistant Fundi Roman (Laurence Fishburn) drives the boss everywhere, gets him out of trouble and tells his story in the voice of Herodotus.
New Rome itself is like a city of sins, with constant frenzied bacchanalia and, on the other hand, a cult of haunts – rather artificial, rather primitive, because you are what you want to be – in New Rome, politics equals entertainment. Economics, journalism and sexuality are the three pillars of the city of sin, as Caesar says. The masses need bread and games. Culture, journalism, politics are a circus in New Rome. The city is constantly on par with itself. Anyone can sell out for money, power, fame, they can sell out themselves.
Caesar Catalina, on the other hand, speaks of a different reality – a utopian reality. He speaks of love and freedom – there is nothing to fear for those who love. Remembering his dead wife, Catalina is inspired by new visions.
All the names of the characters immediately betray allusions to the history of ancient Rome, to Shakespearean reality, which was often also based on antiquity. Coppola takes from Shakespeare the opposition between beauty and ugliness, but does not idealise beauty. Just as Shakespeare himself did not. The postmodernism in this film is evident in the power games, in the temporal values, and especially in the form of the film, because Megalopolis is an experimental work by Coppola. The images flood the consciousness with a bang, with all their violence and at the same time, and it is difficult to find a common denominator in the multitude of ideas. It is closer to Coppola’s experimental and expressionist films such as One From the Heart and Rumble Fish than, say, the cinema classic The Godfather.
Megalopolis is a monument, a memorial, a life-long project of one of the greatest living directors of the 20th century. It is not for everyone, in fact, its audience is very specific, highly intellectual, inclined towards postmodernism, not afraid of chaos. However, Coppola can be admired for the fact that, at the twilight of his life, he was no longer thinking about how to please anyone or how to win an award – with this film, he has tried to sum up his entire life and to delight the most loyal viewers.
