Nathalie Emmanuel and Adam Driver play Julia and Cesar in Big city.

Courtesy of Lionsgate/Courtesy of Lionsgate/Courtesy of Lionsgate

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Courtesy of Lionsgate/Courtesy of Lionsgate/Courtesy of Lionsgate

In the early 1980s, Francis Ford Coppola was known for classics such as The Godfather And Apocalypse now He already had his next masterpiece in his luggage: an ambitious, fabulous drama that would draw parallels between the USA and ancient Rome.

But after the costly flop of his 1982 musical, One from the heartCoppola was unable to put together another big-budget love story, and Big city For decades, Coppola languished. Only a few years ago did he return to the project, selling part of his wine business and investing $120 million of his own money. Even after production was completed, there were still setbacks, from difficulties in finding a theatrical distributor to reports that Coppola had behaved inappropriately toward women on set, which the director denies.

Now, despite considerable adversity, Big city is here, and whatever you may or may not have heard about it, I urge you to see it for yourself. You may conclude, as some of the critics at this year’s Cannes Film Festival did, that Big city is a shambles of disjointed plot points, didactic ideas and confused historical allusions – an epic folly from a once great filmmaker who long ago lost his mojo and possibly his mind. All I can say is that every folly should have as much courage and passion as Big city. I have seen it twice now and both times I have been dazzled by its beauty, its persuasiveness and its moments of brilliance.

The story is set in a city called New Rome, which looks a lot like New York but has Roman elements, from the classical architecture to the bacchanalian parties to a Colosseum-style sports arena. The plot essentially updates a famous Roman power struggle from 63 BC.

Adam Driver plays Cesar Catilina, an architect and designer who wants to transform New Rome into a dazzling futuristic utopia. But Cesar is challenged by the cynical mayor Franklyn Cicero – Giancarlo Esposito – who considers Cesar a delusional dreamer. The conflict is further exacerbated when Cicero’s daughter Julia, a hard-nosed medical student played by Nathalie Emmanuel, asks Cesar for a job.

Coppola’s dialogues are linguistically stiff and take some getting used to. The story itself, however, is a fairly straightforward mixture of love story, sci-fi noir and political thriller. Cesar hires Julia as his assistant and the two become lovers. But numerous complications arise.

There’s the mystery surrounding Cesar’s late wife, who died years ago under strange circumstances. There’s also a lot of dysfunctional family drama involving Cesar’s filthy rich banker uncle played by Jon Voight and a cousin who isn’t a good person – that’s Shia LaBeouf. Both men have their own sinister plans for the future of the town. And in the cliched role of an unscrupulous TV reporter, Aubrey Plaza, as Plaza usually does, steals every scene.

There is more, much more: horse-drawn carriages and nightclub unicorns, old Hollywood-style film techniques and kaleidoscopic visual effects, wild sex and terrifying violence. There are also references to Pygmalion, Marcus Aurelius, Sapphic poetry and hamletwhose monologue “To be or not to be” Cesar recites at one point. He is in the middle of an existential crisis and fears that humanity is running out of time.

And if Big city has one theme, it’s time. The characters talk about time constantly. The trippy production design is full of clocks and sundials. Cesar has the supernatural ability to stop time momentarily, but even he can’t stop its advance for long. While watching the film, I kept thinking about Coppola, now 85, and his own struggle with time, including the four decades he spent trying to Big city made.

But whatever resentment Coppola may feel toward an industry that has both honored and shunned him over the years, there is no trace of bitterness in the film. Cesar believes in the future, and so does Coppola. Just because Rome fell, he seems to be saying, doesn’t mean the world has to end. Wars can be stopped, the planet can be saved, and people can choose to live in a more inclusive and just society.

Above all, Coppola clearly believes in the future of cinema and that in a medium flooded with franchises, streaming garbage and AI technology, there is still room for a work of art on the big screen that is as magnificently improbable and deeply human as Big cityLike so many of Francis Ford Coppola’s films, this one really comes from the heart.