Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza and Shia LaBeouf star in an epic reimagining of the Roman Empire in modern-day New York City on the brink of ruin.

The character in Megalopolis played by Adam Driver with idealistic passion, Cesar Catilina, is a visionary genius intent on saving New York City by building a utopian future, dislodging the elite ruling class in the process. In many ways, Cesar’s mission, both noble and egomaniacal, seems a direct reflection of the dogged determination of Francis Ford Coppola to get this movie made at any cost. The “fable” could almost be an allegory for the pursuit of a dream in which an auteur can still make a monumental epic without compromise in a Hollywood that marginalizes art to focus purely on economics.

Much has been written about how Coppola ended up self-financing the opulently scaled feature, with a reported budget of $120 million, raised partly through the sale of a large piece of his wine empire. And reports circulated widely after a Los Angeles screening in March, attended by honchos of major studios and streaming platforms, that no suitor was stepping forward.

But affection and nostalgia don’t count for much in the commercial equation. The word out of the L.A. screening was that nobody could see a way to make the numbers work, especially with the massive marketing spend Coppola envisioned. Then there was the big question of who the audience might be for a movie that’s part political drama, part arty sci-fi, part romance and even part screwball comedy, peppered throughout with lofty references to literature, philosophy, history and religion. The perception is now public knowledge in the industry that this film is never going to find a wide audience, and it’s impossible to disagree.

So is it a distancing work of hubris, a gigantic folly, or a bold experiment, an imaginative bid to capture our chaotic contemporary reality, both political and social, via the kind of large-canvas, high-concept storytelling that’s seldom attempted anymore? The truth is it’s all those things.

It’s windy and overstuffed, frequently baffling and way too talky, quoting Hamlet and The Tempest, Marcus Aurelius and Petrarch, ruminating on time, consciousness and power to a degree that becomes ponderous. But it’s also often amusing, playful, visually dazzling and illuminated by a touching hope for humanity. “Don’t let the now destroy the forever,” says Cesar.

The story’s nucleus is a Roman Empire footnote about Lucius Sergius Catiline, an aristocrat and aspiring consul attempting to overthrow the Republic with a plan to boot out the upper class and liberate the underclass from debt. Those Rome references translate smoothly enough to modern-day New York (renamed New Rome), in architectural echoes, in statuary and in inscriptions on monuments and buildings.

Coppola’s screenplay rechristens Catiline as Cesar to evoke a better-known historical statesman, with Driver sporting a bowl haircut to match. In an inspired design touch, Cesar’s offices are in the spire of the Chrysler Building. He’s first seen standing on an outer ledge, and just as he’s about to fall, he stops time. That vaguely Matrix-adjacent skill, while it prompts some very cool sequences, doesn’t end up having all that much bearing on the actual plot.

More significant is Cesar’s invention of a miraculous new cellular-level building material called Megalon, environmentally friendly and aesthetically boundless, with which he wants to rebuild the city and return it to the people. But the brilliant architect and urban planner has staunch opposition from the newly elected conservative mayor, Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who inherited a fiscal disaster from the previous administration and wants to build a casino complex to boost revenue. Frank and rich cronies like his fixer Nush (Dustin Hoffman) want to stick with the “safe” option of concrete and steel.