‘Megalopolis’ Ostensibly Likes Motherhood. Why Does It Feel So Weird?

Image Credit: American Zoetrope

Megalopolis — Francis Ford Coppola’s latest and notably self-financed artistic project—has been weighed by the critics and found (mostly) wanting. Frequent descriptors include: strange, tonally incoherent, simply bad. Having seen the film, I concur, though the above is neither a fair nor complete summation of all Megalopolis is, not even perhaps the most important way of assessing this work.

Coppola may do whatever he wants, of course. He’s a five-time Academy Award winner, it’s his money, his vision. And regardless of the critical consensus, no one watching Megalopolis can be in doubt that a singular mind stands behind this offering. There are portions of the film that fly fast and free beyond the bounds of entertainment—moments that scoop up the soul on transcendent liftoff in the way of all great art. Moreover, this is a project of ideas, marked out as a fable, bold enough to explicitly raise the question: “When does an empire die?” To call it timely feels too on the nose, unforgivably trite. And yet, it is a film aimed right at 2024, this moment of American uncertainty, a moment when a less shallow and less febrile society might be provoked to engage in soul-searching. And that is something indeed. [1]

Foregoing any segue at all, I pivot now straight to the female cohort of characters in…