‘Megalopolis’ Arrives as a Cinematic Artifact of an Outdated Conversation About Urbanism

One of the most delicate dimensions of art is timing. The right film, painting, album, or work of architecture at the right moment can rattle cages, illuminate new horizons, instigate new thinking, and achieve immortality. Miss the mark, dither, and it’s just another disposable object. That argument underpins, at least in part, writer-director Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, finally released after he began writing it in the 1980s. It’s a movie with a lot on its mind: urbanism, empires, politics, utopia. But Coppola has been trying to make Megalopolis for so long that its window closed years ago, and it enters a culture where it feels passed by, hopelessly naive, and misaligned with the current conversation.

Courtesy Lionsgate