Francis Coppola’s Youth Without Youth (from the story by Mircea Eliade) is a deeply personal film for the filmmaker. He’s stated in numerous interviews that when he was made aware of the story about a 70 year old Romanian linguist who is struck by lighting and ages backwards, that he felt he was made to make this story into a movie. Sounds odd, right? Well Dominic (Tim Roth) is struggling to complete his life work, and considers suicide. However, things change when he is struck by lighting and begins to age backwards. He has another chance to finish his life work (a book about the origin of language). This second chance at finishing a close-to-the-heart project appealed to Coppola because he often stated that at 68 he felt like he had been successful with his business (wine maker), but still felt unfulfilled creatively. Youth Without Youth shows Coppola returning after a 10 year sabbatical with a vim that can only be found in his earlier work.
The last film of Coppola’s oeuvre where I felt this kind of visual exhilaration was his take on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. In fact that film reminded me a lot of Youth Without Youth (and a lot of other Coppola movies) where you could easily watch the film with sound off and get the same enjoyment. The problem, however, is that Dracula was based on a classic horror story and had the safety net of mythology for Coppola’s garish visuals to fall into.
In Youth Without Youth his screenplay is a murky mess of metaphysics, doppelgängers, and a failed love story; however, in spite of the written material the films star, Tim Roth (who spends a lot of the movie talking to himself), is fantastic as Dominic. The dilemma he faces towards the end of the film is an interesting one: he meets a German woman who resembles his lost love from his youth....she has also been struck by lighting, and in an interesting development has begun to linguistically age backwards as she begins speaking in ancient languages that help Dominic understand more clearly the elusive nature of his life’s work. The dilemma of course is that Dominic is in love with this woman and must decide if that’s more important than finishing his life work. It doesn’t help that Dominic’s evil doppelgänger is around whispering in his ear throughout the film. One again…sounds odd doesn’t it?
The film is a must see for its visuals alone. It appears this material has awoken a sleeping giant in Coppola. His film is interesting if nothing else because it shows us what kind of story a director can tell through nothing but beautifully framed and constructed visuals. Coppola has always been at the forefront of new ways to visually tell a story, and in Youth Without Youth it doesn’t appear that he’s all the way back (the film meanders despite its reverie-like mood and visual approach), but he’s pretty damn close considering the material he left us with 10 years ago. Youth Without Youth is one of the best looking films of 2007, and for that alone its worth seeking out and devouring beautiful scene after beautiful scene.
I realize I haven’t said much about the movie…well there’s not much to say because I was so damned confused by the story; however, I didn’t care, and I as I mentioned in this mini-review, the visuals move the story along. So, I figured I would let the visuals do all of the talking for me:
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