I understood two words of “Youth Without Youth”: “The End.” I don’t want to say this thing is complicated, but Tom Stoppard just called to beg for an explanation.
Francis Ford Coppola’s first film in 10 years is just your ordinary philosophical/spiritual/academic/sci-fi/mystical/romantic/linguistic/Nazis are chasin’ me/I’m aging in reverse and my girlfriend is 10,000 years old fable. I apologize for all the elements I’m leaving out, but my editor ordered me to keep this piece under 40 million words.
Dominic Matei (Tim Roth) is a 70-year-old Bucharest man having bad dreams while he tries to finish his book about the origins of language. On Easter of 1938, he is struck by lightning that leaves him with his teeth falling out. But that’s only so his new teeth can grow in.
The clock has turned back on old Dominic: His teeth, skin, eyes and other organs are now functioning like those of a 40-year-old man, and his mind is better than ever. As a geezer he was already learning Chinese and Sanskrit; now he can learn them in his sleep.
Also, he can master the contents of any book just by touching it and even guess which way the ball is going to fall in roulette. The Nazis want to kidnap him, seeing him either as humanity’s greatest weapon or at least a fun guy to bring along for a weekend in Monte Carlo.
So passes an agreeably strange first hour. Just the idea of a guy getting a second youth and pursuing a new love with all of the wisdom of age at his disposal is plenty to sustain a movie – even if you don’t throw in a sexy Nazi spy with swastikas woven into her garter belt, Dominic’s habit of splitting into several selves to talk about his dilemma, a lost love, the power of complete memory, a rumination on the coming atomic age and a cameo by Matt Damon, who starred in Coppola’s last movie, “The Rainmaker.”
I expected things to pare down a bit. Instead, the second hour makes the first look like a circle-a-word puzzle. In Switzerland, where Dominic spent the war, he picks up a cute blonde named Veronica who is herself hit by lightning and starts channeling the spirit of an ancient Sanskrit-speaking woman.
So, off we go to India to find her previous life. Then she starts regressing further, toward the very beginnings of language, as Dominic greedily takes notes, muttering that it’ll all make great material for his book.
Among all these questions, the one that sticks is this one: Who’s that tumultuously attractive actress playing Veronica? Answer: Alexandra Maria Lara, last seen as Hitler’s secretary in “Downfall,” who has an unplaceable accent and a face as pure as the alpine wind. She looks set to be the next Eurohottie.
The movie around her may well turn out to be a cult item, something that’ll get the masterpiece stamp on the Rive Gauche. Giving you something to chew on counts for something, but I haven’t got time to see it eight times. As Coppola switched lenses and tilted his camera and channeled a dozen schools of European cinema, though, I never quite got over the suspicion that what the film is really about is looking like as many other films as possible.
YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTHFilm without sense.
Running time: 126 minutes. Rated R (sexuality, nudity, disturbing image). At the Paris and the Sunshine.