United States, 2024
Directed by Francis Coppola
With Adam Driver (Cesar Catilina), Nathalie Emmanuel (Julia Cicero), Giancarlo Esposito (Franklyn Cicero), Aubrey Plaza (Wow Platinum), Shia LaBeouf (Clodio Pulcher), Jon Voight (Hamilton Crassus), Lawrence Fishburne (Fundi Romaine)
So the director of “One from the Heart” (1981), or perhaps of “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (1992), is at it again, telling in a grandiose way a grand romance struggling against time, trying to transcend time, overcoming in fact time. This is precisely because he can stop time, and she seems in the stunning shot coming after an already overflowing stream of spectacular visions and actions the only living person realizing what it going on without being herself frozen in time, that Cesar Catilina definitively captures the imagination and the sensuality of Julia Cicero. The relation is off, however, on a bitter note, the architect more obnoxious and distrustful than ever. The carefree socialite insists. They eventually meet again on the top of a building that fittingly feature a giant clock (laid on the ground) and this time, as time is again frozen, confrontation gives way to a more polite, amenable relationship.
They meet again, later, after a scandal nearly ruined Cesar Catilina’s reputation and authority, and the loss of his power to stop time, on the same spot, with the addition of a few beams hung above the dizzying void. Julia Cicero tries to give him back a sense of confidence and hope: she gets more than she hoped as Cesar Catilina eventually acknowledges his strong feelings for her and kisses her, in a scene where bodies defy gravity, looking like an enchantment, a delightfully poetic moment opening a new chapter in the narrative – with the uncanny power magically restored and even shared.
Shared it is again, one last time, as the unwieldy narrative is wrapped up, time standing still because both lovers wanted it even as the whole world around them celebrate the urban utopia the architect, after many crises threatening the very existence of the city and its political institutions and his own life, has managed to impose on just everybody and to build relentlessly and successfully. But this time it is another person who avoids being frozen in time, chirping and crawling even as the rest of mankind is still, the cute baby girl of Julia Cicero and Cesar Catilina, the symbol of the next generation which is to benefit from the better world her parents are constructing, the hope that the best of humanity would keep moving and prevailing – it is telling that the scene is shot with the same dramatic slanted low angle shots usually used in the film for the tall and impressive buildings of the city; it is no longer those buildings which look so towering but the ideal hero, lovers, family – what a fine and conventional visual expression of a happy ending could be fathomed, even if it is framed within what is arguably an over-Baroque and over-the-top imagery.
Of course, the love story could not have been a quiet business, and not just because temperaments differ. Suiting the old cultural tradition, with William Shakespeare a perfect instance, so perfect he is quoted, or rather recycled in an odd theatrical scene that turns a public dispute into a kind of eloquence competition unfolding in an atmosphere fitting a gladiator brawl but with an interpretation so over-expressive it feels ham acting, it is cast from the start as an obvious star-crossed romance, as Julia Cicero is the beloved daughter of Franklyn Cicero, the powerful mayor of the city and the top personal and political enemy of Cesar Catilina, the chief of the city hall’s urban planning department and a Nobel Prize laureate – both men bitterly disagree on how to transform the city, and they clashed earlier when Franklyn Cicero was a district attorney suing the architect for the murder of his wife, a ghost that keeps haunting Cesar Catilina.
But it is not only a dead woman, whose image who raises troubles and could make a love affair with Julia Cicero impossible: Cesar Catilina is the half-hearted lover of Wow Platinum, an influential news broadcaster longing for even more power. Neglected by her lover, she resigns herself to marry the architect’s uncle, the wealthiest man in town, the lustful, extravagant, and very old Hamilton Crassus and bides her time to avenge herself on Cesar Catilina. She finds an equally ambitious mind who is as keen as her to crush Cesar Catilina, though for other, pettier, nastier, reasons, Hamilton Crassus’s debauched son, Clodio Pulcher, who harbors also his own political ambitions, betting on popular anger at inequity and urban changes to become a new leader, to the detriment of both Franklyn Cicero and Cesar Catilina.
The vicious attacks and plots, the brutal manipulations, the endless and increasingly bloody battle for power make up a huge part of the rambling screenplay, being as many stumbling blocks on the road to success and bliss of Cesar Catilina, admirably wicked and ultimately futile, and always vigorously if outrageously shot, efforts to thwart his work and spoil his romance; they also raise as many political and ethical issues.
So the director of “Apocalypse Now” (1979) is at it again, telling in a grandiose way a grand story resonating with his era’s most critical aspects, sensitive topics that roil and divide the public opinion, the film standing as a troubling forerunner, a damning statement, a self-designed beacon rooted in a seminal literary text. This time, the director departs from modernity to reach back to the distant era associated with the birth of civilization as the West views it: gone are Thomas Stearns Eliot’s pithy verses, in is Sallust’s Latin rigor – but Sallust is not the narrator here as comments and revelations are made by Cesar Catilina’s personal assistant Fundi Romaine. While love confronts time, this part of the film conflates timelines: past is not reconstructed but some of its elements are integrated to a future evoking visually and otherwise the present.
“Megalopolis” pertains to the science fiction genre, but it is more a matter of convenient dating and special effects extravaganza. Apart from streaming pavements and other architectural quirks and the tale of a wonderful construction material with a dinosaur-like name supposedly everlasting, unbreakable, and even apt to be recycled in surgery, there is little to wow and inspire the sci-fi fans – most of the scenes look like the ordinary life. But an ordinariness flourished with every possible nods to the Roman antique arts, lifestyle, and language, enabling a stunning if tacky creativity in fashion and arts and crafts that set the production values of the film in a league of their own, both superbly lavish and senselessly ludicrous. The unsubtle idea that this vibrant invented world conveys is actually the trite cultural and political comment associating the current United States to Rome, with New York inevitably cast as the New Rome (and this is indeed the name of the city Franklyn Cicero, Cesar Catilina, and belatedly Clodio Pulcher, vie to rule).
Part of the questions raised unsurprisingly deal with decadence and inequity – is democracy about to die, can a state where a few possess so much money and power remain viable – but another part, derived from the dreams and research of Cesar Catilina, is more attuned to the existential and ecological angst defining the early 21st century zeitgeist. The falling radioactive debris of a crashing old Soviet satellite cause enough damage to hasten the plot dealing with the urban planning battle between the mayor and the architect and the one pitting Cesar Catilina’s ambitions against Clodio Pulcher’s, shaping a new section of the film far more exciting and vivid than what came before, packed with so many twists and turns it gives the feeling the film is longer than the actual runtime of 138 minutes, and this time it is enjoyable (the same feeling of a runtime turned elastic could have been felt before, but mainly because the endless show of fake Roman lifestyle and festivals and the lumbering display of the tortured antics of Cesar Catilina, unapologetically shot from every angle in a flashy style and edited in the jerkiest way, just feel tiresome).
Bathed most of the time in an uncanny but lyrical golden light and being unquestionably the magnificent display of what both the imagination of a great filmmaker and the latest cinematic techniques can craft, the film nonetheless can be readily dismissed for indulging too much on excessively refined and elaborate shot compositions and on the urge to tell so much about the state of a civilization – at times, a simple shot can look a real jumble while many lines sound pathetic because of the contrast between their grandstanding delivery and their arguably vapid contents. But the mess it looks does reflect the uncertainty of both the world it depicts and the lead character.
Teetering on the verge of self-destruction, New Rome cannot but present the sharpest and most shocking contrasts, the luxury, energy, glory of the elite and the economic system tragically both giving the city its power and its cachet and undermining the social fabric and the standard of living of its countless poorer denizens; struggling to pursue his goals and to find balance and happiness again, Cesar Catilina is also a man of contrast, courting disaster with his obnoxious ways and his own penchant to debauchery and yet sincerely eager to built a more humane world, and not alone. Looking to tell the singular tale of a man with dreams and flaws (so it can be said that the director of “Tucker: the Man and his Dreams” [1988] is at it again), Francis Coppola is exploring, with mind-blowing energy and fluidity what the cinematic language and techniques can, in his view, achieve, without restraint, true, but also without fear, making an odd, baffling, extraordinary film that is, after all, cast from the start as a fable – so imagination is thus central to the narration and the audience’s intelligence is also part of the endeavor.