Reel Entropy

Megalopolis is the masterpiece at the end of time, the scrambled ramblings of an octogenarian who has watched the world rise out of and fall back into fascism, at once resigned, hopeful, crass, depraved, bitterly audacious and frequently laugh-out-loud funny with bizarre performances from an all-star cast, overindulgent and incoherent in the best possible ways. An epic for the ages. What a magical film.

New Rome- The greatest city in the world and heir of 2,000 years of democratic tradition writhes and groans as it races toward collapse, as it has many times before. Power has centralized under totalitarian mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) and Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight), octogenarian head of Crassus National Bank, who become bitter rivals once they realize they are the only rulers left. Depravity, open corruption and urban decay, remarked on in passing by a disinterested media, are around every corner, and the screaming masses have long since accepted their poverty and dream not of revolution, but of enjoying the last few rays of New Rome’s hazy golden light. In this hour of monsters, unbeknownst to the people, their last hope is utopian urban planner Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), a man in an ivory tower who can stop time on command for his own observation. Understandably, this has driven him quite mad.

Catilino is Crassus’ nephew, and as chairman of the Design Authority, he has almost dictatorial power to reshape the city, but only with the approval of Mayor Cicero, his ideological and personal rival who, as district attorney, investigated Catilino for his wife’s disappearance years before. The film’s main focus is the romance between Cicero’s daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), and Catilino that emerges within this grudge.