You can’t really fault anyone who might call Francis Ford Coppola’s first film in nine years – the philosophical, surrealistic and reality/mind bending “Youth Without Youth” – a pretentious, “ponderous mystico-historical disaster” (like the Entertainment Weekly did in their derisive review).
It’s stirring and impenetrable, mystifying and absurd (with shades of “Jack“). However, there is an ineffable quality to it that lingers and resonates.
Having received a critical beating at the Rome Film Festival in the Fall, Coppola made a plea to critics not to judge the film, but rather only asked them whether the film made them think and if this was the only criterions one might put on the film, it would get a remarkably high grade.
Obviously, however, this is not the way most films are judged.
A spy thriller, love story and a dream-like metaphysical examination of age, time and consciousness Coppola’s return is at the very least, highly ambitious and probably asking too much from the average movie-goer.
The weighty film concerns itself with a Romanian linguist (Tim Roth) in the winter of his years despondent that he may never finish his life’s work (echoing semi-autobiographical personal concerns of Coppola himself and the ‘Megalopolis’ project he tolled away in vain for over a decade) and simultaneously haunted by the love of his life that got away.
In what might seem as a preposterous point of attack, the professor is struck by a random bolt of lightning and we soon learn that it has not only not killed the theorist, but it has inexplicably rejuvenated his once decrepit body. After the 3rd-degree burn have implausibly healed themselves and the bandages have come off, the octogenarian finds himself with the healthy body of a mid-30-something, with memory, wisdom and experiences intact.
Essentially, a miracle has given him a new lease on his life and a second chance to explore his master thesis.
If you can suspend your disbelief this far, the story then goes like this: The Nazis catch wind of this phenomenon and start demanding whatever research and findings Roth’s doctor (the excellent Bruno Ganz) has accrued and collated from this unearthly specimen.
Fearing for his life, Roth goes on the run, disguising his identity, traveling around Europe in hopes of avoiding detection. The Nazis catch up with him and he begins to develop a doppelganger and telekinetic powers that can both assist in his escape and aid in absorbing research for his book at an impossibly mammoth level. Still with us?
From there Roth inadvertently stumbles upon a gorgeous, young woman (“Control”s Alexandra Maria Lara) who is the exact spitting image of his former paramour. She too is eventually hit by lightning and a similar process begins to effect her only in reverse.
Trying to describe it from there might be pointless, but suffice to say the film starts to examine impossible love, dual personalities the history of time and language and inner and exterior consciousness to varying degrees of success.
On paper it sounds ridiculous and on some levels it is, but it’s also bewitching and fascinating – that is if you’re up to giving Coppola a bit of leeway.
No doubt, ‘Youth’ will polarize all viewers as many will detest its cumbersome conceits and others will love admire its dreamy and surreal ambition and imagination. It’s as subjective a film as there will be this year.
In lesser hands this becomes DePalma’s “Raising Cane” (a film with the distinction of containing possibly the worst performance in the history of cinema – John Lithgow)
Some people are going to cry foul and or call this film pretentious rubbish and we can’t argue with them too strongly, but there’s something ineffably deeper here that saves the film from being plain silly. At the very least you have to admire Coppola’s lofty aspirations, especially after not having made a film in almost a decade. [B]
“Before The Devil Knows Your Dead”
We should have reviewed this one months ago (we did preview it), but time got away from us and then we felt we missed the boat. Here’s our belated review.
Utilizing a Tarantino-like mix-n-match of time-jumping chronology, Sidney Lumet makes a Faustian and tragic plot between two brothers into one of the most riveting and compelling film, the now-80-year-old master has created in decades.
The conceit is based on two financially overextended brothers – one trying to save his marriage to his hot trophy wife (Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Marisa Tomei) and one desperately trying to make his child support payments. With Cain (Seymour) whispering to the naïve and impressionable Abel (Ethan Hawke) that their only option is easy money, the two create an ill-conceived plan to knock off their parents jewelry store (“a victimless crime,” Seymour whispers devilishly insisting no one gets hurt and insurance takes care of everyone. The father is played by an amazing Albert Finney).
Of course, it all goes horribly wrong and a gut-wrenching tragedy unfolds as the brothers find themselves deeper and deeper in their own quicksand of imprudence and its mortal consequences. Taut, superbly executed with a master’s economical touch, and excruciating to watch at times, ‘Devil’ is Lumet’s best work in over a decade, but somehow as thrilling and as emotionally visceral much of the intrigue and betrayal is, the film doesn’t stick and impact the way it should. It’s economy, unsentimentality and episodic brief nature makes it somehow feel like an extremely powerful episode of TV that you’ve completely forgotten about the next day. The experience itself is still worth the price of admission. [B]
Slobbering movie nerds like Jeffrey Wells, should note: Marisa Tomei gets very, very naked in this movie. We normally have a lot of contempt for male-based movie blog sites that get in a lather every time the smallest nipple appears on screen (cause clearly none of these writers ever get laid), but she looks so startling barren, you’re likely wiping the drool off your dumbfounded chin and failing to contain your composure.