In Defense of Megalomania

To be called a megalomaniac is not, generally speaking, a good thing. The word is synonymous with the worst sort of ambition, the kind of infamy that makes a man recognizable by just one name. Napoleon. Hitler. Mao. The megalomaniac is obsessed with power, and not just amassing it but exercising it, wielding it, using it to shape the world. He is Shelley’s Ozymandias, immortalized in stone at the height of his powers: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

But there’s another type of guy who comes in for the megalomaniac label—one who wields power in a world entirely of his own creation. His mania is for making art, not war. And when you look on his works, what do you feel? Maybe despair, or awe, or terror, or exhilaration. Maybe what you see makes you ache, or weep.

Maybe you can’t look away.

Some people think Francis Ford Coppola is a megalomaniac. A lot of these people are saying so right now, as his long-awaited and ironically titled new film, Megalopolis, arrives in theaters. But it has been said before.

Coppola was one of the first directors to emerge as a star in his own right, out of an era when the studio system ruled the creative process with an iron grip. His 1972 triumph The Godfather, which he directed at the age of 29, is not the movie that launched his career; he was already an Academy Award-winning screenwriter when he was tapped to helm the project. But it did earn him the reputation—for which he is either revered or reviled, depending on who you ask—for being an uncompromising visionary. 

The film was marked by a continuous war between Coppola and the studio—over the expensive but authentic choice to film in New York, and over the casting of a then-unknown Al Pacino and a “washed-up” Marlon Brando in the lead roles. He later described the battle for creative control as “the most frightening and depressing experience I think I’ve ever had,” but it was an experience he would have repeatedly.

No studio would green-light his 1979 Vietnam War epic, Apocalypse Now, because Coppola wanted something they wouldn’t give him: to own the rights to his own movie. So Coppola went rogue, cobbling together the money from other sources—including his own bank account.

The resulting film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, but the greater triumph was in the director’s refusal to cede ownership, ensuring a future in which he could resurrect any darlings he’d killed at the altar of marketability. In 2001, he released a 202-minute director’s cut, Apocalypse Now Redux. Depending who you ask, it is a work of either unparalleled genius or utter masturbatory excess. 

It was towards the end of filming Apocalypse Now that Coppola had the idea for Megalopolis, a mind-bending magnum opus that is perhaps the ultimate expression of his dedication to (or obsession with) making movies his way. This time around, the director was taking no chances and brooking no dissent when it came to the creative process: In 2021, he sold off a portion of his beloved vineyard in Sonoma—for an estimated $500 million—to pay for the movie, because it’s his party, and he’ll make it weird if he wants to.

And man, oh man, does he want to.

Megalopolis takes place in the far future, in a city called New Rome that is very recognizably New York. An opening scene finds Cesar, the architect hero played by Adam Driver, gazing down at the landscape from a precarious perch atop the Chrysler Building. Cesar is the inventor of a substance dubbed “Megalon,” which looks and behaves like gold ectoplasm and can be used to do just about anything—including build cities, which is Cesar’s goal.

His vision: to remake New Rome as a utopia called Megalopolis.

His enemies: the city’s current power players, including corrupt mayor Cicero, played by Giancarlo Esposito.

The parallels between this story and the current state of American politics aren’t exactly subtle; we are reminded that Rome (the old one) didn’t fall in a day; the decline of a civilization is a slow crumble that starts with people losing faith in their leadership, their government, their democracy.

A title card at the film’s start reads: CAN WE PRESERVE OUR PAST AND ALL ITS WONDROUS HERITAGE? OR WILL WE TOO FALL VICTIM, LIKE OLD ROME, TO THE INSATIABLE APPETITE FOR POWER OF A FEW MEN?

Yes, it is ambitious.

And long before anyone had even seen Megalopolis, a consensus had emerged that Coppola’s four-decade, self-financed passion project was shaping up to be a trainwreck: wildly expensive, weirdly experimental, and proof that the director’s ego had finally spiraled out of control.

In May, a report from Variety claimed that Coppola was behaving chaotically on set, smoking pot in his trailer for hours and refusing to plan scenes. The same month, an anonymous crew member told The Guardian that “hours and hours would go by without anything being filmed,” only for the director to finally “come out and whip up something that didn’t make sense.”

A few weeks ago, Coppola filed a lawsuit against Variety for libel and defamation as a result of that report. But when it came to the negative chatter about the movie itself, it’s safe to say that he both expected it and was unbothered by it. One early trailer for Megalopolis even turned the preemptive bad buzz into a marketing strategy, featuring a somber voiceover from Laurence Fishburne, saying, “True genius is often misunderstood,” as quotes flashed by of all the mean things critics had said about Coppola’s previous films over the years. The Godfather, one read, was “diminished by its artsiness.”

Granted, it would have been better if most of the quotes in this trailer had not turned out to be fake (a marketing consultant, who had apparently solicited them from ChatGPT without verifying their accuracy, was fired over the snafu). But the strategy is beginning to seem prescient as the reviews roll in.

Megalopolis is “megabloated and megaboring” (The Guardian), “a zero-star, wacko disaster” (the New York Post), and “unruly, exaggerated, and drawn to pretension” (Deadline), although that same critic did pronounce it “a pretty stunning achievement, the work of a master artist.” 

Even among those who rated the film highly, the word “enjoy” doesn’t quite capture their experience of it, as exemplified by the Rotten Tomatoes audience member who wrote: “It’s the worst movie I’ve ever seen. . . and I loved every second of it.”

Everyone, critics and normies alike, seem to agree that Coppola has flown too close to the sun. Megalopolis is too messy. It is too much. It’s like an ice cream sundae served in a vat the size of the Trevi Fountain—or, because no compromises, maybe in the actual fountain itself.

Watching the movie, I felt this keenly. The world Coppola has created in Megalopolis is visually resplendent but narratively incoherent; it is like a work of improvisational theater starring the characters in a Hieronymous Bosch painting. It is interesting to experience but also frustrating to watch, and indeed, by the end of the movie, I was the only one doing this: The other people in the theater had stood up and walked out halfway through, and my husband had fallen asleep.

Later, he explained that he had done this on purpose: “I had this realization that the movie wasn’t going to actually end,” he said. “It would just… stop being displayed.”

And yet, unruly though Megalopolis may be, it’s the movie Coppola wanted to make. And, like the fall of Icarus, there’s something thrilling and even beautiful about seeing a person reach for the sun, heedless of the warning: Don’t fly too high.

The most cynical critics will call this hubris, and these same people will no doubt delight if Megalopolis flops. But without creators who are willing to take great risks, there can be no great art. Sometimes the work is as glorious on the page or screen or canvas as in the artist’s imagination; sometimes, as Megalopolis goes to show, the substance gets lost in translation even as the style dazzles. Who knows? Even this movie may yet emerge as a classic. One of the Coppola films I personally love the most, his gothic and occasionally goofy adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, was not beloved in its time. 

But regardless, Megalopolis is a remarkable creation: experimental, daring, imaginative. And if it takes a megalomaniac to keep making movies like this while other directors are toiling away on Despicable Me 4, so be it. Someday, the filmmaker who launches himself in the direction of the sun might actually touch it—or maybe he’ll inspire other people to try, which is just as important. The art world needs maniacs like this, stomping around, making a spectacle of themselves as they try to create something worth our attention.

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Wait with bated breath as the lights go down. Look upon the Megalopolis—and if this particular work is too much, you may at least appreciate that it’s too much of something you’ve never seen before.

Kat Rosenfield is a columnist at The Free Press. Read her piece “How Culture Got Stupid” and follow her on X @katrosenfield.

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