Youth Without Youth Release Date: December 14, 2007 Starring: Tim Roth, Alexandra Maria Lara, Bruno Ganz, Alexandra Pirici, André M. Hennicke Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola
"I hate to say it, but I want people to enjoy it just as when I cook dinner," Francis Ford Coppola remarked of his new film, Youth Without Youth, his first directorial effort in a decade, at a recent screening. "I want people to enjoy the meal and not say, 'Well, I have to go home and think about whether I like it or not.' I want you to enjoy it."
Given the multiple and not inconsiderable themes of Youth Without Youth — mortality, reincarnation, romantic love, the origins of language, man's evolution in the post-atomic age, and more — one might suspect the film, adapted by Coppola from a novella by the Romanian religious historian Mircea Eliade, to be of the sort that resists such simple enjoyment. On the other hand, given the logy diffuseness with which the film handles said themes, a viewer might be better off merely reveling in the visual and sonic splendors Coppola and company — cinematographer Mihai Malamaire Jr., editor and re-recorder Walter Murch, and composer Osvaldo Golijov among the most conspicuous of the director's top-flight collaborators here — dish out on a constant basis. That approach, alas, also fails to fully satisfy.
The picture begins in 1938 Romania, as aged, despairing professor Dominic Matei (Roth) prepares to take his own life. Recollections of a lost love (the first role in the film played by Lara) and regrets over an inability to complete his life's work compel Matei's quest to end it all, which is put to an abrupt halt when he's struck by lightning. The bolt from the blue seems to reverse Matei's aging process; as he heals from his burns, he grows new teeth, new hair; his skin smoothes out. A kindly doctor (Ganz, in a peculiarly stilted performance) tends to his recovery and tries to protect him from the interests of the Nazis, who are, of course, very interested in anti-aging processes, mystical or otherwise. Matei is drawn into a web of intrigue involving a seductress with swastikas on her garters (Pirici, a lusciously sensuous presence) and a Nazi mad scientist who could have stepped out of Gravity's Rainbow (Hennicke). These sequences meld film-noir chiaroscuro with Technicolor-esque vibrancy, which then gives way to a somewhat more naturalistic palette as the never-aging Matei quietly slips into the '50s, and meets a new incarnation of his lost love (Lara again), who is herself a reincarnation of an Indian mystic. Her "regressions" bring her a Bridey Murphy–like fame and, more important for Matei (not to mention the doppelganger he acquired along with his new youth), could be the key to his finishing the above-cited life's work. The only problem is that his newfound love ages years every time her soul takes a trip back in time.
Confused yet? It all plays fairly coherently, actually, particularly if you're paying attention, but it doesn't all amount to much. I think that's more than partially due to the insistence with which Coppola handles the material. He hasn't made a film in 10 years, and several of the pictures he made were misbegotten or work-for-hire pieces (one of them, the rather insufferable Robin Williams vehicle Jack, actually has a strong thematic tie to this film). This is a comeback and a personal project, and from the very opening frame — a gorgeous opening-title tableau — I could see Coppola straining very hard to make it count. Every beautifully conceived shot, every camera pivot, every deployment of ultra-Romantic music by Certified Real Composer Golijov, seems to bellow "Look at me! Do you feel the fantastic emotional and/or metaphysical effect I'm trying to convey?" It becomes a bit oppressive after a while — like chasing a fettuccine alfredo with a lasagna with a tiramisu in the space of five minutes, and then doing it all over again.
That Roth's lead performance is scrupulous but strangely detached doesn't help matters. The only performers to bring real flesh-and-blood verve to their roles are the female ones. Pirici's a lithe, appealing femme fatale, while Lara (who was also seen to excellent effect this year in a far less sympathetic role in Control) is both virtuosic and moving as an appealing and confused young woman who's likely to break out in Sanskrit at the drop of a hat, or, rather, at a flash of lightning (yes, the movie's visual leitmotifs do dovetail that way). As a fan and well-wisher of Coppola's, I wanted very much to like this movie, and I'll probably give it another shot once the DVD comes out. But, at first sight, Youth Without Youth's striving for exuberance reveals an almost desperate effort too much of the time.
WATCH VIDEO: Coppola Q&A
