Reviewed by Anna Krahn
Stars Tim Roth, Alexandra Maria Lara, Bruno Ganz,
Andre Hennicke, Marcel Lures, Adrian Pintea, Alexandra Pirici,
Florin Piersic Junior, Zoltan Butuc
Written by Francis Ford Coppola, from the novella by Mircea Eliade
Certification UK 15 | US R
Runtime 124 minutes
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
If there was an award for biggest let down of the year it would have to go to Francis Ford Coppola’s Youth Without Youth. When your directorial CV consists of Hollywood gold such as The Godfather and Apocalypse Now expectation levels go through the roof. The likelihood of the film living up to anywhere near the level of those films was never going to be great. But it's not just that Youth Without Youth isn't an instant classic, it's not even all that good. We waited ten long years to see Coppola bring us something special and what did we get? Pretentious, long, confusing and dull.
Youth Without Youth is the story of Dominic, a 70-year-old linguistics professor (Roth) obsessed with the origins of language who, after being struck by lightning, finds himself regressing back to his youth. After confusing the bejesus out of the doctors by growing new teeth and all and telling them he's 70-something he wanders off into the world to find love again with Veronica who is the spitting image of Laura, the woman he was in love the first time he was thirty. Confused yet? No? You will be. Veronica starts to speak in Sanskrit intriguing the nutty professor no end and so they go to India and discover that she is in fact a reincarnated Indian mystic. He gets cleverer by the minute but no older. The spirits Veronica's ever wearier body plays host to are getting more and more ancient and with that Dominic is becoming that bit closer to discovering the origins of language. Very exciting for him. The audience, on the other hand, doesn't give a shit.
As a person fascinated by linguistics I was originally intrigued by the story line. Until I got bored. The script is so convoluted that following it is almost impossible and it wasn't just me — I heard snoring in the other seats. It's an ambitious piece of work and the philosophical musings about time, reincarnation, regeneration, memory and reality are all very interesting. It's just that it doesn't really work as a story.
Coppola, please make another one soon so we can forgive you.