You’re going to hear some wildly mixed reactions to Youth Without Youth, Francis Ford Coppola’s first film in 10 years. When it premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September, it received poor reviews (“Youth Without Youth will translate to theatres without audiences,” said Variety), and I’m sad to report that at the press screening I attended, several of the critics giggled repeatedly at inappropriate moments. But while this movie likely won’t find box office success, and its Oscar-season release seems like wishful thinking, it feels like the kind of movie that will find a rabid cult of defenders.
It would be nice to say that Coppola, who hasn’t made a great film since Apocalypse Now, has hit one out of the park with his return to directing. I don’t think he did, but certainly this challenging project is worthier of Coppola’s talents than Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Jack, or The Rainmaker.
Based on a novella by Mircea Eliad, Youth Without Youth begins in 1939 when Dominic Matei (Tim Roth), a 70-year-old professor who has never finished writing his time-consuming book about linguistics and has never found love, is struck by lightning. Miraculously, this doesn’t kill him but revitalizes him, restoring his youthful looks and giving him superhuman abilities. Dominic soon attracts the attention of the Nazis, and falls in love but, of course, complications abound.
The plot isn’t quite as simple as that—Dominic’s active fantasy world comes into play, with inner dialogues and erotic fantasies woven into the story in a way that blurs the line between where his mind ends and the world begins. The film also switches back and forth between genres— or genre stereotypes, at least—with alarming abruptness. There are times when Youth has the lovesick melancholia and jumbled-timeline structure of a Wong Kar-wai film, times when it becomes an all-out melodrama, and times when it mimics Old Hollywood spy thrillers and film noir capers (a giveaway comes when Dominic points out a Maltese falcon on his balcony).
This is apparently a very personal film for Coppola, who largely self-financed the movie and tinkered with it in the editing room for nearly two years. Some reviews have suggested that Dominic is partly a stand-in. Like Dominic, Coppola has laboured fruitlessly on an ambitious project—spending the last decade trying and failing to mount a film called Megalopolis. Would it be unkind to also suggest that perhaps Coppola identifies with the elderly Dominic because he, too, is generally considered to be past his prime?
My rational mind says that the film doesn’t work. While its attempt to mix genres into the cinematic equivalent of Dominic’s psyche makes it an interesting experiment, but it is an emotionally distant movie. But Coppola has proven himself to be a filmmaker who knows what he’s doing, and I’m positively intrigued by this film’s strange internal logic.
I wonder if this movie will improve on repeated viewings, when the convoluted plots’ subtleties become clearer and doesn’t have to contend with the high expectations placed on it at initial viewing. Perhaps Youth could be the kind of film that develops admirers who create their own theories about the symbolism, the autobiographical elements, and the tenuous line between fantasy and reality. Otherwise its a movie so personal that the only audience member who completely understands it is Francis Ford Coppola.
Certainly there are flaws. Whether the muddled plot and sudden shifts in tone are fatal flaws depends on your perspective, I suppose, but what to make of the stiff, awkward performances of the majority of the supporting cast? Even Tim Roth and Bruno Ganz, the two acknowledged masters in the cast, have trouble with their stilted dialogue (although Roth generally acquits himself admirably in a challenging role). And there are times when the sillier aspects of the story threaten to enter high camp territory (I’m thinking of the Nazi scenes in particular).
I wouldn’t want to discourage anyone from seeing Youth Without Youth. It looks beautiful and many individual scenes have flashes of greatness. The story about a failed man given a second chance has some emotional resonance, and the oddly structured narrative is interesting to follow. Sometimes Youth Without Youth stimulated me, and sometimes it tried my patience. I’m giving it a two-and-a-half star rating, but I don’t feel very confident about that grade. This is a movie that demands repeated viewings, and I have only seen it once.
