Long before its release, Megalopolis had been a topic of conversation; Francis Ford Coppola famously invested over $100 million of his own money—primarily from the Coppola winery—because he was unable to obtain any funding from outside sources for his grand passion project, a project he claims he has been wanting to make for many years now. When it premiered at Cannes, it received very mixed reviews and it significantly underperformed at the box office following its opening weekend theatrically, bringing in only $8 million.
Megalopolis follows the brilliant and idealistic Cesar Catilina, played by Adam Driver, on his journey to create a better future for humanity while buffeted by foes with varying agendas plotting against him. Megalopolis is set in the city of New Rome, whose aesthetics combine (naturally) Classical Roman, Art Deco, and coked-out Iris Van Herpen. The film shunts naturalism, utilizing highly theatrical dialogue, plotlines, and—for the most part—acting.
The most successful performances of the film lean into the theatricality, mirroring plays from antiquity. Aubrey Plaza in particular is a standout; I, and many others, saw her as capable of only playing (though playing well) one role; a snarky, cynical, millennial with deadpan humor. However, her character, the ridiculously named Wow Platinum, completely breaks this type. Wow Platinum is asked to fill a great many roles in Megalopolis and Plaza’s impressive performance helps make the viewer buy everything her character does. Adam Driver, Jon Voight and Shia LaBeouf also deliver strong performances as a Randian genius, a confused old man and an impish, aspiring politician with a propensity for drag respectively. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Nathalie Emmanuel struggles to sell her character—Julia Cicero, the mayor’s daughter who falls in love with her father’s enemy, Cesar Catilina—or do what the heightened atmosphere of the film demands of her. As the lead actress of the film, she is tasked with carrying much of the emotional stakes however she was unable to hold that load, falling flat.
Therein lays the dichotomy present in almost every aspect of Megalopolis: it is visually ambitious, and sometimes stunning and yet, is often very cheap looking; its effects are lavish yet amateurish despite its very experienced director; it is over the top, satirical, and yet painfully sincere; so much and yet so little happens during its 138-minute runtime. It defies the binary of “good” or “bad”, I often struggle to explain exactly what happened in the movie and how it made me feel. Megalopolis is the most baffling release I have seen since Cats in 2019, yet it didn’t leave me with the same feelings of horror and despair; rather, I left my seat in an emotional state that can only be described as similar to mixing every color of paint on the palette together, creating a color not quite brown nor gray nor anything really, just something which has a color. The only confident feeling I can pin down is a lack of a particular feeling: boredom. Throughout its runtime, I was always looking forward to what Coppola would throw at me as the viewer.
With the great Francis Ford Coppola being 85 years of age, it is likely that Megalopolis will be his final contribution to the film canon. With him insisting on his artistic vision at every turn during the film’s production, one hopes that he succeeded in telling the story he claims to have wanted to tell for decades. Coppola likely was operating under the idea that this would be his swan song, and with that in mind the overwhelming sense of “too much” within the film makes sense; an auteur’s final work, trying desperately to cram everything he wants to say into it that he can, leaving the world with one last message. Obvious parallels can be drawn between Coppola—the artist—and Cesear Catalina—his art—but I chose to leave those up to the viewer to think about; at the end of the day I don’t regret seeing Megalopolis and even if I can’t define if it is “good” or “bad”, I think it is a worthwhile piece of art and I enjoyed my experience.
If Megalopolis suffers from its complexity, The Substance succeeds due to its simplicity.
The Substance, which seemingly came out of nowhere, has left an explosive impression on audiences. The Substance examines beauty standards and the anxiety around aging under a magnifying glass, and then proceeds to bash the viewer over the head with said magnifying glass; these topics are as old as young women fear becoming, and yet in our current highly visual culture are all the more at the surface of our lives.
Demi Moore plays Elizabeth Sparkle, an aging celebrity aerobics instructor, who decides to take an experimental drug simply known as “the substance” to regain her youth. However, it is her youthful form, played by Margaret Qualley, who takes over Elizabeth’s former job, and then her entire life. The concept is fairly simple, and yet the movie is able to get an incredible amount of mileage out of it; there were two points where I was ready for the credits to roll, already satisfied, but at neither point was it over, much to my delight.
The film is a completely ridiculous yet cutting satire; our lead is a celebrity aerobics instructor who works for “the network” under a producer subtly named Harvey, played by Jack Quaid in an exquisitely flamboyant and sinister manner. When Margaret Qualley’s character, Sue, becomes a celebrity she goes on a late-night talk show simply called “the show” and her big gig that the film builds to is hosting the New Year’s Eve special. Of course, most obviously of all, the film is named for the drug simply known as “the substance”. There are those who see this as being detrimental to the film—after all, why would someone do all this just to hold onto their primetime aerobics show? However, they are dead wrong; the strange vagueness and emptiness of all of this is the point.
Besides the hilarity of the movie, it is able to balance this with impressive moments of pathos as well as abject horror and disgust in a way that never feels tonally dissonant. For Coralie Fargeat’s sophomore feature, this is incredibly impressive; The Substance and Revenge promise a very strong career for the director. Everything comes together, from the performances to the score and incredible practical effects to create one of the year’s most exciting releases.
Besides coincidental release times, I do find it interesting that Megalopolis and The Substance have been dominating film conversations at the same time, because as different as they are, they do strangely parallel each other; Megalopolis is one of the most celebrated living filmmaker’s grand finale, whereas The Substance marks the potential rise of a new director. However, their reception could not be more different; while the former has received extremely mixed, though mostly negative reviews and empty theaters the latter has been a massive critical and commercial success. The Substance is much more confident in its direction and concept—one of my first thoughts when I left the theater was that I loved how the movie just kept going—whereas the ambitious vision of Megalopolis suffers from not just its director being 85, but also apparently smoking throughout the entire production. It struggles to truly commit to any one thing in its attempt to be this grand, totalizing work of art whereas Fargeat’s and every other person involved in the production’s greatest strengths could be said to be their commitment to a singular vision.
All in all, I do find these to be promising signs for film as an artform; neither of these films were afraid to take bold strides, which I unconditionally applaud even if in making these strides they may have tripped a little on their feet. They are breaths of fresh air in an era when the past couple years have been dominated by what I can only call “slop” and for this I believe that they both deserve celebration.