Review: Coppola’s “Megalopolis” imagines feminist democracy as salvation for the American Republic

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All Things Being Equal is fortunate to have contributing writer Debbie Albano dispatched to the Roger Ebert Film Festival in Champaign, Illinois. She will be providing us film reviews that help understand the role of culture in perpetuating or helping us challenge the forces that engender and normalize inequality in U.S. society and political economy. Enjoy!

From the Roger Ebert Film Festival (of Overlooked Movies), April 23-26, 2025

“Megalopolis,” Francis Ford Coppola, dir, 2024.

Moving from 1868 on the west Texas frontier of John Ford’s “The Searchers” to somewhere in the not- too-distant future of director Francis Ford Coppola’s 2024 “Megalopolis,” set in a city not unlike New York is a leap that only Marvel super heroes can usually make. Hang with it, though. It’s a wild cinematic ride, like much of Coppola’s work: Brilliant. Prescient. Big. Thrilling. Dizzying -- the camera perched somewhere in a cloud near a swaying I-Beam where two lovers attempt to reach each other, to embrace, and to kiss. There is no safety net below, only a megalomaniac developer’s dream of his very own Oz.

Coppola says he began to work on this film 30 years ago; ultimately, he created an allegory that merged ancient Rome with a futuristic “New Rome,” replete with corrupt and greedy political leaders, destructive in-fighting, power grabs, and slavish minions doing plenty of literal and figurative caressing of egos and licking of…boots.

In a virtual interview following the showing of “Megalopolis,” Francis Ford Coppola spoke with the audience about what he had hoped to address with his film. “Like Ancient Rome, we are in danger of losing our Republic. How do we get out of this?” he asked. “We have to [somehow] leap over patriarchy,” was his suggestion, “because patriarchy is going nowhere.” He cited the work of Riane Eisler, “The Chalice and The Blade,” in which she looks at the work of Marija Gimbutas, a cultural and linguistic anthropologist who examined ancient Indo-European societies and found that a large percentage were matriarchal and consisted of more democratic, peaceful, and egalitarian structures than the social systems based on male domination.

“Megalopolis” suggests in multiple scenes that time can be stopped, and that time cannot be stopped; that love is above physics but not above suffering; that everything is real and everything can be reinvented. Coppola says he has employed “poetic realism” in his film and that taken as a whole work, it serves as a metaphor for the human condition: dangerous, wonderful, and unpredictable. Will our civilization fall? Is there hope for its survival?

These are broad, complicated ideas that Coppola addresses cinematically – a difficult undertaking and one which he approaches with abandon. It is no wonder that people leaving the theater can be heard saying, “I think I have to see it again to understand it.” Or as one of the festival panelists said, “Just let it wash over you the first time. Don’t get hung up on trying to figure out the meaning of everything you see.”

Wait for the second or third time and enjoy the challenge.