Video — Consumed

2024 · Francis Ford Coppola

Megalopolis is Coppola operating at maximum ambition, working outside the studio system to realize a vision he's carried since the 1980s. Adam Driver plays Cesar Catilina, an architect with the ability to stop time, who clashes with the mayor (Giancarlo Esposito) over the future of New Rome, a stand-in for New York. The film is deliberately operatic, mixing tableaux staging with effects work that ranges from practical miniatures to digital compositing.

The editing rhythm is unconventional, Coppola layering multiple timelines and visual registers simultaneously. Some sequences play like silent film, others like news broadcasts or stage plays. It's maximalist filmmaking that prioritizes ideas and visual poetry over narrative clarity. The production design references both Roman architecture and retrofuturism, creating a temporal collision that mirrors the film's themes about cyclical history.

What makes it compelling is Coppola's refusal to compromise. At 85, financing the film by selling his wine business, he's made something genuinely strange and personal. It doesn't always cohere, the tonal shifts can be jarring, but it swings for profound statements about power, time, and human progress. It's the kind of expensive, sincere, messy epic that rarely gets made anymore, a director using every tool in the cinematic arsenal to externalize internal philosophy.