Francis Ford Coppola’s chaotic fever dream takes place on a dying hope for humanity

For over 40 years, acclaimed director Francis Ford Coppola has been trying to get his long-term project off the ground. After countless delays, Megalopolis Premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. The film is an experimental fever dream about a dying faith in humanity and the fascination with building a utopian tomorrow. When the powers that be stand in our way, how do we fulfill our purpose of creating a legacy and a better world for future generations? Megalopolis It is not only a transcendental pleasure for the senses, it is a manifestation of Coppola’s dreams for humanity and his dedication to cinema.

Adam Driver plays Cesar Catalina, an architect with a vision to transform a declining city into a sustainable utopia. With his power to control time, his rebuilding plan maps out an idealistic new future. The corrupt mayor Franklin Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who wants to maintain the current state of affairs, stands in his way. Even Catalina’s ill-fated cousin Claudio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf) seeks to gain power from his father, Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight), to take over the city. With the help of the mayor’s daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), the future is not so difficult for Cesar and his plans.

The strength of Megalopolis is in the complexity of humanity

The film’s flashiness does not overpower the story

of Megalopolis Opening sequence, I knew watching Coppola’s movie would feel like an experience of a lifetime. He immediately introduces us to Catalina’s time-controlling abilities with sensational images, rich with intensity. As the driver’s control hovers over a skyscraper, he stops time with a simple command and freezes it so easily with a snap of his finger. This simple sequence is accompanied by a ticking clock over a thunderous bass that wraps us in its allure with ease and excitement, as we accidentally wait to examine the deeper meaning of it all.

That’s the beauty of it Megalopolis. It is dazzling and polluted with chaos, but it is ultimately a simple story about the complexities of humanity when one person dreams of changing and saving the world while others are ready to destroy it. Coppola gives us political figures dead on corruption to prevent change. Then there are the rich, who will pull out all the stops to do the same by increasing their money, power and influence.

Megalopolis is a stunning cinematic achievement

The story is modeled after the real world

Coppola models the characters after the real world, eliminating all subtlety and leaning into extremes. But beneath all the commotion is a glimmer of hope that Coppola wants to grab us. The evil theater may be in your face, but so are the hopeful desires, which come through with welcome humor.

Megalopolis Contains a remnant of references and influences to the ancient Roman times and its empire’s fall. The allegories laid out mask an even more revealing infrastructure about humanity when it comes to lust for power, wealth and influence. Many people are losing faith in each other, in the American Dream, and in humanity as a whole. And even if given time, it seems like things are getting worse. Time, after all, is something we’ve always learned to appreciate as it flies by.

But Coppola, in his artistic motion picture, challenges us to believe that we can manipulate it when we use it wisely – in this case, for humanity’s survival. With how Coppola presents such themes relating to the survival of mankind, it can be easy to sit through Megalopolis And view it as a pretentious body of work that limits itself in design. But I encourage you to embrace this film as an expressive and seductive sci-fi drama that is the ultimate mind-bender.

Megalopolis It’s not just an entertaining escape, it’s a fever dream that rarely lets up. It is an orderly, noisy experience that deliberately heightens all the senses to ensure that we feel the size of its stunning world. It may have taken over 40 years to make this film, however Megalopolis is an achievement in cinema and worth the wait.

Megalopolis Now playing in theaters. The film is 138 minutes long and rated for sexual content, nudity, drug use, language and some violence.