Vision Cafe December 2007
Youth Without Youth
Francis Ford Coppola’s Youth Without Youth stars Tim Roth as Dominic Matei, an aging professor of linguistics who questions the meaning of life as his own life nears its end. Then an event changes his life by restoring his youth. Youth Without Youth is a movie that is cinematically beautiful. The story is surreal and enchanting.
The possibilities awakened by this film reinforced what I have always known, but rarely felt—that our lives are these wondrous series of events that shape-shift us into becoming all that is within us.
This is Coppola’s first film since The Rainmaker (1997). It is a project dear to Coppola’s heart as he both wrote the screenplay, based on a novella by Mircea Eliade, and directed the film. The film reflects his interest in consciousness as the focal point of reviewing our lives, the element of time and an exploration of personal identity. Coppola says: “The story touched my life. Like its leading character, Dominici, I was tortured and stumped by my inability to complete an important work. At 66, I was frustrated. I hadn’t made a film in eight years. My business was thriving, but my creative life was unfulfilled.”
Coppola has given audiences the opportunity to walk away with more than an evening of entertainment. This film is one I definitely want to see again, as it affected me deeply and raised questions in my own mind about the nature of consciousness. Roth’s performance is amazing as a man who is confronted with his own immortality. Now take this situation and juxtapose it against the Nazi invasion of Europe—Roth’s stunning transformation is of interest to certain Nazi scientists and he must leave all that he knows in order to not become another human experiment. The film is all the more dramatic as we see the world invaded by war. In the midst of these perilous times, Matei becomes a man changed forever by love. What is interesting is that, as an academic, Matei records all of his thoughts in an ancient tape recorder and in his diaries. He is a linguistics professor and therefore is obsessed with languages. Soon, he must choose between the love of his life and the work that has consumed him throughout. The contradiction between the reality that we are taught and the reality we feel which is illuminated by this film marks my own questions with existence.
Coppola offered, “You can enjoy the film like a Faust story. An old man gets young, has an opportunity to finish his great work and fall in love again, but can’t finish the work because of love. That is his ultimate sacrifice. But it can also be an educational opportunity to learn more about Eastern philosophy.”
As an allegory, Youth Without Youth is full of impressive symbolic moments which are stunning and support the film’s underlying message. It asks: What is time? What are dreams? What is the concept of duality? This lyrical and stunning film is haunting in its beauty and is a cinematic experience not to be missed. –SLM www.youthwithoutyouthmovie.com