Youth Without Youth (2007)

Powerful

Fantastic!

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Francis Coppola's last mainstream Hollywood film was The Rainmaker and before that it was the critically maligned Jack. Since then the legend of cinema has walked away from being a director for hire. I guess he is still smarting from the failure of his Zoetrope Studios.In Youth without Youth Coppola turns to European art cinema and not for the first time. His black and white Rumble Fish was heavily influenced by the German Expressionist style.Tim Roth plays Dominic a 70 year old man in Pre World War 2 Romania, who is struck by lightning and is rejuvenated astounding his doctor (Bruno Ganz). Dominic is 30 years younger with a regenerated body, he even grows new teeth, he undergoes various tests put to him by his doctors. However it is not only the physical body that has improved, also his mental faculties have gone through a quantum leap. This also arouses the interests of the Nazis once the war erupts.Of course Dominic hides that he has an alter ego that converses with him and seems to have enhanced powers himself. Also whereas the older Dominic was striving to finish his life's work in the origins of linguistics, now he has the time to research and write further. He speaks many Oriental languages now he can read by just looking at a book.As the war rages on Dominic escapes to Switzerland to continues his research. In the 1950s, a meeting with a woman called Veronica who reminds him of Laura, a lost love turns the film further on its head. Veronica transmigrates to another soul back in time such as an early disciple of Buddha in ancient India. She keeps going back further in time speaking in ancient languages enabling Dominic to get very near to the first spoken text but at the risk of losing Veronica for good.The film is a mixture of vision and story. It could easily be something that could had been made by that other American filmmakers Terrence Malick or David Lynch. The film sets its stall out with the European Art-house cinema style, it is not a literal movie as the film feels dreamlike. You do wonder if this is all a dream of Dominic after being struck by lightning.The film is little known but I was surprised by how accessible it was and how much I enjoyed the film. Coppola has never been afraid to experiment and at times he has misfired badly. Even here some of the scenes set in India does not convince as they are too modern with modern cars driving past. There is even a shot of The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai that crops up in scenes set in Uttar Pradesh.However this is an intriguing, experimental even a slightly unnerving film. Roth should be given plaudits for drawing the viewer in and keeping them invested in his character.Youth without Youth shows the world that Coppola is still a master filmmaker.

This was a wonderful movie. Before I watched Youth without Youth I knew before hand that it was little bit on Coppola's experimental side. I also was bit of skeptical on the rating here on IMDb. I was gladly surprised, it was way better than I expected to.First of all, like others have said here, it relays on philosophy quite a lot. Many don't like that but for me, it couldn't be better. The story revolves around linguist who is trying to discover the original protolanguage, but on the same time the power to do that is sucked from elsewhere. In the end the protagonist needs to select either his life work or love. In the meantime it handles the questions of language, the questions of life, the questions of epistemology. Is the knowledge the ultimate goal in life as it's often regarded in philosophy (love for wisdom as its translates from Greek)?But the movie handles a lot more than just that and it's amazing how it does it. It gives view for development of man. How differently one behaves in younger or older age. Tim Roth's acting was good on this part. While Dominic, the protagonist, became younger you could see the there still was the walking style of elder. The movie has a glimpse of schizophrenia in it when the double comes in to the play. That gives very interesting view on psychology. The psychology is reflected to philosophy by mirrors. Very modern indeed and some may think that little pretentious.A lot of these things can probably credited to the original novel by Mircea Eliade which I haven't read; the plot is just brilliant (on most parts).Problem is, however, that sometimes something just felt out of the place. In the beginning acting was absolutely horrible and the lighting effect, well... I had to cringe. The opening titles were beautifully done but the lighting, oh the lighting, it just burned my eyes and not by being realistic. I wonder how did Coppola even pass something like that to the movie. But I guess it was for to bring the nostalgic feel that came through many times through out the movie. Of course it was set on 1938 to 1960s but the movie also reminded about the old cinema. It gave some sort of meta-fiction to the movie but not too much that you would be distracted by it. The opening titles is a good example of that nostalgia. It was somewhat clichéd how the plot continued. The scene on the rocky beach for example, that was just stupid but on the other hand one could but that on the meta-fiction part.In the end the movie really makes you think and has very good cinematography. I would recommend Youth without Youth to all those who have even that little something on the artistic side.

Youth Without Youth is a purposely odd movie. An old man becomes a young man and encounters a variety of people. There is a general story arc, but it all feels rather episodic. There are some clever moments, but overall it seems to go on and on without getting anywhere.Watching the movie made me curious about the novella it's based on, perhaps because its structure seems more conducive to literature. I don't know if the book is any good, but I could see a book within the movie that has potential.I think the problem is, the movie sits on the fence between storytelling and dreamlike mystery. And because it never commits to either, it does both poorly. I see here that responses to this film are all over the map, and that's not surprising. The enigmatic approach will always appeal to some people. But for me the film felt like a half enigma that never engaged me, even though it was just curious enough to keep me discontentedly watching until the end.

In "Youth Without Youth," the protagonist, Dominic Matei, quite literally, gets a second lease on life. Dominic is a frail man of seventy when, on Easter morning in 1938, he is struck by lightning while crossing a street in Bucharest. But rather than dying or being forever disfigured, Dominic undergoes an amazing transformation as a result of his experience - sort of his own resurrection into eternal life: for he not only returns to the body he had when he was in his 30s (think of this as a kind of "17 Again" with substance), but he develops the mental acuity and telekinetic powers of a "superman" as well. This is quite a boon for an ambitious writer whose primary goal in life has been to survive long enough to complete a comprehensive and exhaustive work on human language and consciousness. Yet, as his mental faculties increase at an ever-accelerating rate, Dominic's life becomes a dizzying and eventually undifferentiated blur of reality and hallucinations, dreams and memories. Soon, the Nazis have made him an object of "study," determined to use him as a guinea pig in their efforts to create a "master race." But that's only half the story, which extends well into the late 1960s, with Dominic holding onto his eternal youth at virtually every step of the drama.Impeccably produced, written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, "Youth Without Youth" is a fascinating mixture of war time drama, unrequited love story, psychological study, ancient and primordial mysticism and sci-fi fantasy. The screenplay, based on the story by Romanian writer Mircea Eliade, provides plenty of food for thought for those willing to dig into its deeper themes of time and the through-line of human history, and a feast for those who like a challenging story, solidly constructed and solidly told. The structure is admittedly episodic in nature, but it's only because the movie is utterly unafraid of veering off into intriguing and wholly unexpected paths when it feels the need to do so. This keeps the movie perpetually fresh and the audience thoroughly intrigued from first frame to last. It isn't important that the movie make perfect sense at, every moment; what's crucial is that we be willing to put ourselves in the hands of the filmmakers for the time it takes to tell their story - to go where they want to take us. And those places are fascinating.Tim Roth carries the film with his beautifully understated embodiment of a man trying desperately to understand his place in the world, and Alexandra Maria Lara is heartbreaking as the loving, troubled young woman with similar issues who briefly joins him on his journey.With its enigmatic storytelling and its refusal to spell everything out in simplistic terms for a spoon-fed audience, "Youth Without Youth" risks alienating a large segment of the ticket-buying public. But for all those with an appreciation for the novel and the unique, "Youth Without Youth" is an unheralded gem to be reveled in and savored.