The Madly Captivating Urban Sprawl of Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis”

Once time resumes, every passing moment brings human civilization closer to ruin—a catastrophic collapse foretold by the fall of Rome. In fact, the film takes place in a city called New Rome, though it is quite visibly New York, with recurring shots of the Chrysler Building and the Statue of Liberty. (The movie was filmed, with much visual and digital trickery, in Atlanta; the cinematographer is Mihai Mălaimare, Jr.) New Rome abounds in classical motifs: Doric columns prop up buildings adorned with Latin dicta, and a remarkable number of citizens wear gold laurel leaves, even the ones who aren’t riding chariots around a mock Colosseum. The plot, a laborious but lively enough contraption, comes to us straight from the Catilinarian conspiracy of 63 B.C. Cesar is an update of the politician Lucius Sergius Catiline; his chief nemesis, Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), stands in for that other Cicero, the famed consul whom Catiline sought to overthrow.