Coppola’s film explores love, power, greed, change, destiny and hope. It focuses on the obsession with perfection in a world far from flawless. The storyline follows Shakespeare’s themes, the political history of Catiline and Robert Moses’s biography of Robert Caro.
Megalopolis taps literary and historical references such as Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius and the spiritual journey of Siddhartha and Greek poet Sappho.
Francis Ford Coppola wrote and directed Metropolis, a science fiction drama. Adam Driver plays Cesar Catilina, an artist whose ingenuity leaps him into a utopian, idealistic future. A genius student, he develops an innovative material called Magalon. He has plans to use it to build a utopian city called Megalopolis. But his ambitions do not go unnoticed with his opposition, Mayor Franklyn Cicero, played by Giancarlo Esposito.
Cicero is committed to a regressive status quo that perpetuates special interests, greed and partisan warfare. As new mayor, Cicero inherits a bankrupt administration and plans to orchestrate a casino complex to boost revenue and rectify modern New York City.
Nathalie Emmanuel plays Julia Cicero. She is romantically involved with Cesar, tearing her loyalty between her father’s scheme and Cesar’s hope for a better world. Such a rip causes a conflicting chasm, though her independent thinking may help her resolve their differences.
Principle photography took place in Georgia. Yet one scene showing an entrance to Ciero’s home looks like the front of Huntington Gardens Mansion.
However, the story is about a hierarchical society divided between achieving a better society and maintaining the status quo. Coppola compares the Catilinarian conspiracy to today’s America, which is at the beginning of the end.
The rest of the supporting cast includes Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Kathryn Hunter, Grace VanderWaal, Chloe Fineman, James Remar, D.B. Sweeney and Dustin Hoffman.
