There is a refreshing idealism Big city. In a time full of grim, nihilistic post-apocalyptic stories, Francis Ford Coppola's latest film is a retrofuturistic parable about creating a better world through architecture, science, and dreams. Unfortunately, that shine fades almost immediately. The film wants viewers to imagine an idealistic future. But its vision for that future is so vague as to be meaningless. For all its good intentions, Big city is a confusing, bloated disaster.
This shouldn't be too surprising, as the period leading up to the film's release was largely focused on one controversy after another. There was the long development period, with director Coppola working on the film in some form since 1982 and being forced to finance the entire $120 million production himself because studios turned him down. There were the reports of inappropriate behavior on set (and a subsequent lawsuit), particularly the hiring of actors “who eventually got canceled,” and all those fake AI-generated review quotes. The four-decade-long process of making the film a true masterpiece, Big city in the cinemas was an absolute disaster, just like the film itself.
This is the part of the review where I would normally give a clear summary of what the film is about. This is not so easy with Big citybecause it borders on the nonsensical. Set in an alternate universe called New Rome City, it revolves around a war of ideas between Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) and Cesar (Adam Driver), the head of the Design Authority (a sort of very powerful group of architects who are treated like rock stars for some reason). Cicero wants to keep New Rome as it is, a functional but not particularly inspiring place that could perhaps use a lucrative new casino. Cesar wants to rebuild it as a fantastic utopia called, yes, Megalopolis.
The idea is pretty clear: America is like ancient Rome at its peak, a place full of excess and self-indulgence (as evidenced by the fact that everyone is doing a lot of coke) that is simultaneously heading toward a historic fall from grace. Big city tries to ask if there is another way. It doesn't necessarily have answers, but it really wants to ask the question.
Almost every aspect of Big city — both the film and the fictional city at its center — feels completely underdeveloped, despite being in the works for so long. New Rome City, for example, is literally just New York City with a perpetual golden hue. People drive modern cars, use QR codes, and read the New Rome Post. Aside from the occasional chariot race, there is no creative design that could create a fascinating parallel to our own world.
Even worse is Cesar, who is the core of the film. He's an architectural genius, which you know because everyone calls him a genius and because he won a Nobel Prize for inventing a mysterious building material that's basically magical. (It can be used to create fantastical cities and clothes that make the wearer invisible, and also serves as a handy cure for gunshot wounds.) Cesar has the ability to stop time when inspired by his muse, who happens to be Cicero's daughter, played by Nathalie Emmanuel. This superpower is never explained literally or thematically, and never really has any impact on the story. It's just there.
Nothing Cesar does seems particularly clever. Mostly he quotes Shakespeare at length and says things like “whatever binds power, it stores” in design meetings. It's unclear how his dream city will be funded or built, or how it will actually address real-world problems like income inequality or unemployment beyond giving every adult their own backyard. I'm not demanding a blueprint for Megalopolis, but nothing in the city's concept ever rises above the depths of a “The World If” meme. When Cicero questions whether Cesar's city is realistic and is confronted with some philosophical musings, I take the side of the corrupt mayor. Like Coppola, Cesar is only interested in questions, not answers. But this isn't a story about one man's tragic, idealistic hubris, either—his dream just somehow works.
It would perhaps be generous Big city as if there was a story at all. Coppola has said he collected thousands of newspaper and magazine clippings while working on the screenplay. And that's exactly how the film feels: like a series of thrown-together ideas, with no real narrative to tie them together. Things just happen. A satellite crashes in New Rome, even though it had long been predicted to hit Labrador. When Cicero receives word that the satellite is on its way to the city, he asks, “What should we do?” Then the scene abruptly ends with no answer.
Of course, history is not everything, but it is not as if Big city has many other good qualities. The acting is stilted and jumpy, as if the cast are as confused about what's going on as the audience. The dialogue veers between painfully obvious allegories and painfully childish jokes. You can imagine how bad the sex scenes are. A lot of it is just plain stupid, too. Aubrey Plaza plays a platinum blonde reporter named Wow Platinum, while Cesar's uncle Crassus (Jon Voight) hides guns behind his erection. These moments are funny, but it's not clear if they're supposed to be, given how serious the rest of the film is.
There are some interesting moments. At one point during the theatrical experience, the lights come back on so a real actor in the theater can lip-sync questions a reporter asks Cesar during a press conference. (How this will play out during wide release or when the film hits Blu-ray and streaming services is unclear.) But mostly, it's the kind of movie that makes audiences laugh unintentionally.
I can understand the feeling behind it Big city – damn, that's something the world could really use right now. The film may have been conceived in the '80s, but the core of the movie feels contemporary. It's a shame that the rest of the film – its story, its characters, its acting, and its dialogue – does nothing but get in the way. If Coppola couldn't articulate that point clearly after 40 years of work, there's no way I'm going to understand it in two and a half hours.
Big city will be in theaters on September 27th.