You’d think that a film that has been this long in gestation – Francis Ford Coppola reportedly first had the idea for Megalopolis in 1977 and started writing it in 1983 – and which has been achieved at such considerable personal cost – Coppola sold a vineyard to partially self-finance it – would have something significant to say. But for all its big-hitting visual ambition, philosophical window dressing and pick-and-mix literary references, this is a work of screaming emptiness.
A strident retro-futurist folly that blends Ken Russell-esque kitsch with swaggering self-importance, the film lays out its central conceit – that modern America follows the template of Old Rome – with a reverence that this idea doesn’t really warrant. Coppola carves his opening statement on a stone plaque in a classical font, and then for good measure has Laurence Fishburne narrate the words while sounding as much like God himself as is humanly possible. America, rumbles Laurence portentously, like the Roman empire, is destined to be brought down by the greed and hubris of a few power-crazed men.
