“Megalopolis is a film you have to see at least once in your life, because it is a unique piece of art. But a unique piece does not automatically make a masterpiece.”

To compare the United States to the Roman Empire is not a novel idea, and that is just one example of Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis being on the nose, albeit that one is the sucker punch. Never mind that it gets its Roman history quite wrong, but Coppola is not wrong that the late stage capitalism we find ourselves in feels like the romantic idea of the fall of Rome, even if going by the names of his characters he sets it at the end of the Roman republic and not the 5th century BC. Those who paid attention in history class will know that that eventually set off centuries of dictatorship, so the rosy ending of Megalopolis, Coppola’s labor of love 30 years in the making, is misguided. But this is old man Coppola trying to save the world one winery at a time (and he only had one, so this is his shot), so we can forgive him this sort of flaw. Whether we can forgive him for the confusing film that Megalopolis is or for digging up Jon Voight to seemingly Voight’s own confusion is another matter. Sincere moments of pure camp are mixed with moments of mesmerizing beauty and brilliance, and that’s not even speaking about that one off-screen moment. Like, really off-screen.

New Rome (which is pretty blatantly New York, as Adam Driver almost falls off the Chrysler Building in the opening scene) is the dramatic stage of a tug of war between three powerful men: Frank Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), the city’s unpopular mayor; Hamilton Crassus (Jon Voight), the city’s richest banker; and Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), head of the city’s building authority, and also the film’s protagonist. Cicero is a pragmatist, but also one who wants to protect the status quo, while Cesar is a progressive mind who has invented a new, powerful building material, Megalon. His dream is to tear down the old city and build a new and better one for everyone: Megalopolis. What the plot essentially boils down to is a banal power struggle, despite the love interests (Nathalie Emmanuel’s Julia, daughter of Cicero), femme fatales (Aubrey Plaza’s improbably named Wow Platinum), assassination attempts, and vulgar populists (Shia LaBeouf’s Clodio Pulcher, Crassus’ grandson and Cesar’s biggest rival). But the plot is not what matters in Megalopolis, it’s the ideas. Sadly, those ideas are either half-baked or shots in open goal, so if you come looking for wisdom, look further. Poignancy is not what Megalopolis deals in, no matter how lofty some of the dialogue is, even if that can switch back to banalities that make George Lucas sound like Shakespeare in a second.

What remains is Coppola’s ambitions, and they are lofty and abundant indeed. To say Megalopolis is something never seen before is selling it short, even if some of it feels like Coppola throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. Most surprising is a moment in which an actor climbs up on stage with a microphone and interacts with the screen, as if he were a reporter at a press conference, at Cesar’s lowest moment in the film. It is such an arresting and unnecessary piece of showmanship that the initial confusion prevents Driver’s answer from registering. Split screens, gooey VFX straight out of The Tree of Life, and urban planning wet dreams follow each other in rapid succession, all visualizing Driver’s grand dreams, but these sequences are as confusing as they are beautiful. It is a pleasant confusion though, which cannot be said about the confusion that arises from some of the performances.

With the dialogue being all over the place, from Shakespearean to daytime soap opera, a lot of the cast has no idea what to do with it. This leads to a hodgepodge of acting styles, from Driver and LaBeouf’s theatrical line readings to Plaza’s cringe comedy, and from Esposito’s stilted performance to Emmanuel’s deer-in-headlights. Worst in show (and probably festival) is Voight, who seems to have no idea he is even on a movie set. There is an army of famous actors with very little to do and little to give (using Dustin Hoffman as a glorified cameo is a choice; using Laurence Fishburne as something akin to a ‘magical negro’ is downright offensive). The wide range within which the cast operates is the basis for the disjointed mess that is Megalopolis. It is the likely swan song of an old master who goes swinging for the fences one last time. That is to be admired, as is his blatant attempt to save America before it is too late. Cesar’s ability to literally stop time is probably something that Coppola himself would like to have and use in order to fix the country he clearly loves but sees heading in the wrong direction. Megalopolis is essentially a cry for help, but this cry is so poorly worded and confusing that it will leave most audiences bewildered. It is evidently a film you have to see at least once in your life because it is a unique piece of art. But a unique piece does not automatically make a masterpiece, and Megalopolis is far from that.