| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| BaftaBaby |
Posted - 12/24/2007 : 13:02:23
Youth Without Youth
The film isn't the failure you'll hear people say it is, nor does Tim Roth deserve the superlatives he's been awarded. A filmmaker as assured as Coppola doesn't just forget what he's learned over forty years of writing and directing for the screen. And Tim Roth isn't suddenly capable of adjusting his emotional depth to match his change of make-up as he ages from seventy down to his thirties.
When it comes to Coppola, what's rattled the cages of both critics and audiences is the anticipatory decade between films and probably the two decades between films from a director at the top of his game. Well, that and his choice of such elusive subject matter.
Youth Without Youth deals with no less than the proto-philosophy and ancient spiritual suggestion of The Eternal Return. This concept holds within it the notion that endings are also beginnings. It touches on reincarnation, but is more about cultures than people. The New Year, for example, holds within it both the death of a time and the birth of its successor - we celebrate it today as did the ancients back to the Mesopotamians and undoubtedly before, into pre-history.
Copploa isn't the first to be fascinated by such notions. During the run-up to WWII, many people found a connection between Hitler's interpretation of the inevitable structure for society and a way to fulfil humanity's spiritual destiny.
Cocteau's 1943 screenplay L'�ternel retour also modernised and dramatised the ideas within the myth of Tristan and Isolde. Cocteau was familiar with the writings of Mircea Eliade, who was also Coppola's source. Though controversy still rages about Eliade's alleged Nazi alliances and inherent anti-Semitism, the notion that humanity shares a collective consciousness which is a manifestation of a recurring circle of culture, those ideas have shaped various ancient cultures. Eliade argued, for example, evoking the Indian god Siva, that the powers of creation and destruction are aspects of the same impulse, and the one is contained in the other. Implicit are notions of continuity ad infinitum.
It's that aspect that concerns Coppola, and the story he's woven to contain those ideas is an intriguing one. It's interesting that he's chosen Bruno Ganz in the role of the pre-war psychiatrist who tends Roth, an elderly suicidal linguistics expert whose life work no longer absorbs him. Twenty years ago Ganz played Damiel, the angel in Wim Wenders Wings of Desire, who chooses to alight on earth and fall in love with a mortal.
Youth Without Youth presents us with Roth as Dominic, an equally disillusioned mortal who thinks his salvation may be in removing himself from his life. Setting up a strand of super-reality, Coppola's script subverts his protagonist's suicide attempt by having him struck by a bolt of lightning. Miraculously, though he should have died, the elderly man survives. Not only does he live, but his corporeal form has lost several decades, leaving him with strange powers to accompany his youthful vigor.
As Dominic's skills and learnings guide him through the following decades, meeting people who are doppelgangers of himself and others he's known, Coppola posits many of the questions implied by Eliade's interpretations of humanity's myths and legends.
No, it doesn't always succeed, and yes, there are passages that seem to belong to an even longer version than this one at just over two hours. There's far too much telling about stuff, ideas that aren't on the tip of an audience's tongue. But there are some fascinating scenes along the way, and the production values are never less than convincing.
Though in my heart of hearts I think the whole might work better as an epic poem, Coppola is a filmmaker - no, not just a filmmaker but an auteur, and who am I or who is anyone to say what form he should choose to explore his ideas.
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| 1 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Demisemicenturian |
Posted - 12/24/2007 : 23:47:19
The film starts off intentionally confused. Unfortunately, it is not clear enough by the end to justify this. |
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