What is the explanation for and significance of the time-stopping ability in Megalopolis?

Question

In Francis Ford Coppola's sci-fi film Megalopolis (2024), the protagonist, Cesar Catilina (played by Adam Driver), has the ability to stop time for everything else but himself, a power reminiscent of Za Warudo in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.

Cesar’s overarching goal is to construct "Megalopolis," a utopian city made possible by a futuristic "miracle building material" called Megalon. Is his time-stopping ability connected to Megalon, or is it innate?

At one point in the film, Cesar loses his power while imprisoned. Later, with encouragement from Julia, he regains the ability and even uses it to stop time "for Julia," allowing both of them to move freely while the world remains frozen.

In the final scene, Cesar asks Julia to stop time. She does—revealing that she, too, has acquired this power—and time freezes for everyone and everything except their baby.

What is the explanation for and significance of the time-stopping ability in Megalopolis? Why is it limited to Cesar (and later extended to Julia and their baby)? Could this power be a metaphor for something deeper?

Answer 1

Cesar is a metaphor for an artist, more specifically a "cinema-artist" (be that a director, cinematographer etc.) or possibly Francis Ford Coppola's metaphorical opinion of himself.

Cesar's work (which looks like magic to "non-artists") is metaphor for art and the artistic process. Art's ability to improve the world, change people, and the downsides that come with this life are the main themes of the movie.

In this framework the ability to manipulate time and light can be seen as directly analogous to the mechanics of filmmaking, with the seemingly magical Megalon being cinema itself.

It's an interesting concept, but sadly the movie itself is a mess.

Dan Schindel says

Cesar possesses the ability to halt time, but this doesn’t have any direct bearing on the story. Rather, it’s a metaphor for how cinema enables an artist to control time. Within this framing, the emphasis on Cesar’s travails make sense – his romance with Julia, an attempted public ‘cancellation’ via a doctored sex tape, his Shakespearean musings (literally, as he quotes among other things Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ monologue). Coppola’s mind is more on the past than the present; this is his epic reflection on his long career.

Dani Di Placido describes Cesar's power thusly

Cesar is introduced as having the power to stop time, but he never does anything with it, because it’s not a literal power; it’s a visual metaphor for his artistic talents. All Cesar wants to do is build his “Megalopolis” out of Megalon, but the city’s power players are determined to crush his ambitions.