Entertainment :: Movies
Youth Without Youth by Sandy MacDonald
EDGE ContributorFriday May 16, 2008 How much Francis Ford Coppola’s latest film appeals to you will likely depend on your taste for Tim Roth, since he - and occasionally a psychic double, with whom he debates matters of metaphysics - appears in virtually every frame. If you’re already a Roth fan, intrigued with his Everyman-but with-rough-edges persona, you’re golden, and this dreamlike reverie about transmigrating souls, based on a novella by Mircea Eliade, will drift by like an offbeat travelogue and not the groaner that was almost universally drubbed by critics (Rex Reed, in the New York Observer, called it a "massive dose of Nembutal").
I won’t pretend that I fully grasp the plot, but in essence: On the eve of World War I, Dominic Matei (Roth) a lonely old Romanian linguistics professor, is struck by lightning and recuperates remarkably under the loving care of a protective doctor (beaming Bruno Ganz). He recovers so well, in fact, that he starts aging in reverse - a neat trick that the Nazis sure would like to master. Note the swastika - Coppola all but highlights it -- on the garters of the sanatorium-neighbor-slash-secret-agent (pouty Alexandra Pirici) who seduces him.
Trapped in a wet alleyway on cinematic loan from "The Third Man," Matei employs his burgeoning psychic powers to overcome a Third Reich recruiter (Andre Hennicke, whose cheekbones could out-cut Joseph Cotton’s) and goes on the lam. Spurning an offer of help from a U.S. agent (an earnest cameo for Matt Damon), Matei just happens to meet a pretty young tourist named Veronica (Alexandra Maria Lara), who’s the spitting image of the lost sweetheart of his youth. She too is struck by lightning - what are the odds? -- and things get sillier and more Harlequin Romance from there.
Still, the visually sumptuous Youth without Youth makes for a fairly enjoyable ride, and if you’re patient and willing to view it again - maybe benefiting from the director’s commentary - it might just afford some life-altering insights. I highly doubt it, but then, I don’t count on movies to explain the workings of the cosmos.
Behind-the-scenes featurettes cover the makeup (pretty impressive), the music (by Osvaldo Golijov), and, in general, the making of "Youth without Youth." For those either befuddled or bedazzled, Coppola provides a hand-holding walk-through.
Sandy MacDonald (www.sandymacdonald.com) is a reviewer for TheaterMania.com, TheaterNewsOnline.com, and the Boston Globe. She is also a travel writer and the author of Quick Escapes Boston: 25 Weekend Getaways from the Hub (Globe-Pequot).
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