Youth Without Youth

Dir: Francis Ford Coppola

2007

****

There are many aspects of Francis Ford Coppola's Youth Without Youth that I loved but more that I didn't understand, however I think the harsh reception that the film received on release was more to do with the director than it was the film. It's Francis Ford Coppola after all, his last film was ten years previous with The Rainmaker, a very average film considering his past masterpieces that include Apocalypse Now, The Conversation and the Godfather Trilogy. The truth is his last truly great film was made in 1979 (Apocalypse Now) and after the infamous issues that film endured through its overlong shoot etc, you have to wonder if he's really that great a director after all. I believe he is but these days he would have been put on a blacklist due to poor timekeeping. Youth Without Youth probably doesn't deserve its run time of just over two hours, the story does, the end result doesn't. It begins in 1938 just before the outbreak of war. Dominic Matei (played by the brilliant Tim Roth) is a 70 year old professor of linguistics who is starting to realize his lifelong ambition to find and write a book on the origin of human language has condemned him to lonely and somewhat wasted life. As he feels himself slip into dementia, he decides to visit Bucharest, the place he met the lost love of his youth, for one last time before ending his own life there. However, upon his first few steps out of the train station, Dominic is struck by lightning and felled. He then spends several months in bandage in a local hospital, his healed body revealing a man half his age. Somehow the lightening has given him the gift of youth and he soon finds himself hiding from the Nazis who want to learn his secret. This all sounds a little more hokey than it actually is, once the war is over Dominic has few more minor adventures before he meets Veronica (played by Alexandra Maria Lara) while hiking in the Alps in the late 50s. Dominic, who can now see and interact with his own consciousness as if it were another person, believes that she is the reincarnation of his lost love Laura who died when they were both young. When a storm passes the place they met minutes later, Dominic races back to see if she is safe but finds that she has been struck by lightning. She then identifies herself as being Rupini, one of the original disciples of Buddha. Again, this all sounds silly on paper but the film is strangely captivating. Veronica relapses back in time through all of her past lives, she and Dominic begin a romantic relationship and he confides to her his secret. He learns ancient languages from her as she speaks in her sleep and finally he feels he can complete his life's work, until he discovers that their love is making her age at an accelerated rate, leaving him with a very difficult realization. In all honesty, it's no more ridiculous than either The Curious Case of Benjamin Button or The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window andDisappeared and I would argue that it is far more beautiful. I would say that some of it is up for interpretation but I would also suggest that it doesn't really matter if not all of it makes sense. There are a few early scenes that do look amateurish, shockingly so considering Coppola's talent, but there is also something very unique about the film and something extremely compelling. I didn't feel the conclusion was an anti-climax either, in fact I thought the very last scene was both thrilling and beautiful, even if I’m not 100% sure of what it means. Tom Roth is amazing, the conversations he has with himself are just the sort of theatrics he excels at and I can't think of anyone better suited for the role. It's an odd film, full of faults but it still ticks all the right boxes. Other directors could have made more of the idea I'm sure but I personally revealed in seeing something completely original.