Megalopolis
I think I got the gist of this anti-fascist elitist screed. Power to the aristos speaking and acting on behalf of the people, I guess. It’s not very revolutionary, keeps the plot strictly in the marbled floors. If this is a roman à clef, I can’t parse it, after decades of rewrites. And it’s too damn long!
The basic plot has Catilina, architect extraordinaire, if a little perfectionist. His utopia of a 5-min city hinges on his invention of the megalon, some kind of magic plastic. With it, he can design nature-like cities, but don’t think about it too much.
What matters is that his wife died and he was accused of killing her, the DA is the current mayor and they hate each other. The mayor is a classic cool politician, thinking only about the short term problems, he doesn’t care about leaving a long lasting mark on the world. He just wants to build with concrete and steel, that’s what works. Hints of The Fountainhead, how ironic.
The mayor’s daughter is a socialite, always being courted by the Crassus Jr, the rich eccentric guy. Eventually she tires of that life and goes to work with Catilina, until they fall in love, and with that he recovers his mojo.
Catilina is taken down by a deepfake of his porking the current Vestal virgin (like a roman Taylor Swift?). This was all a ruse by Crassus Jr, he wants to inherit Crassus Sr’s bank. He’s a strict father and doesn’t want to deliver an empire to some idiot like that.
He’s a dirty old man, so when Wow Platinum (a mix between Rachel Maddow, Jim Cramer, and Deeta Von Teese) is dumped by Catilina, she marries Crassus Sr.
Together, Crassus Jr and Wow work together to take over the bank, and topple Catilina, so they can take over power for themselves. They are so clearly fascists, there’s even a swastika tree stump they use as podium.
When push comes to shove and January 6 happens, the actual hero is old Crassus Sr, which kills the “Wall Street whore” and hits the fascist in the ass? His own son! Catilina and the mayor do nothing but keep in power.
The bad guy Crassus Jr ends up like Mussolini, hanging upside down, attacked by his own base. His underling screams “Sic Semper Tyrannis”.
Most people speak in quotes, so it’s perfectly normal to have the whole Hamlet “To be or not to be” speech shoved in the script. Not only do they quote famous people and works of art, they cite their sources. Very helpful.
But come on, give me a break, Jon Voight is a Trumpist nutter. How come he’s the hero? And a banker, even. Jesus. Let’s not even get unto the sex scenes. Network was a satire, but here, evil talk while fucking is the norm. The opening scene reminded me of The Hudsucker Proxy. Never remind me of better films I could be watching.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.