In a recent interview with The Guardian, Francis Ford Coppola wondered what it would be like to relive his career differently. “At my age,” he said, “You start to think about stuff you didn\'t think about before. One of the big questions that keeps coming up is ‘what if?’ What if I\'d done this instead of that? What if I\'d become the experimental, avant-garde filmmaker I always really wanted to be?”
That line of thinking is obviously what’s led him to jumpstart his career again with a slew of personal projects, Youth without Youth being the first in that category. True, it is sad how the public always expects a new Godfather from him, a task Coppola cannot possibly deliver. As a monument to his self-revival, Youth without Youth is a thinly disguised meditation of Coppola’s own wishes. He cannot regret The Godfather series or how it made him a powerful figure in the American film history, but he can fantasize about the alternative, and Youth without Youth is the ultimate rendition of that fantasy.
It’s experimental. It’s avant-garde. And it centers on a seventy-year-old man who was never able to complete his life’s work and one day stumbles into his second chance.
Professor Dominic (Tim Roth) has been studying many ancient languages, and it’s his ambition to discover the origin of human language itself, but even nearing death in 1930s Romania, he is nowhere near complete. One rainy day in Bucharest, Dominic is struck by lightning and badly injured. At the hospital, the doctors are amazed that he is not only recovering remarkably fast, but he has also emerged from bandages as a 30-year-old man. Furthermore, Dominic discovers that he has superpowers, ranging from telekinesis to memorizing an entire book by waving his hand over the cover. These abilities make him the target of the Third Reich’s top scientist, bent on creating a race of superpowered men.
Such a plot alone could make for a fun pulpy adventure story, but Coppola doesn’t stop there. He grabs this campy Sci-Fi angle—a segment laden with schlocky sights like Nazis experimenting in big mad scientist laboratories—then blends it with more mysticism, horror, politics and romance; all the while asking the audience to absorb every bit as a serious, revered work. In the latter half of the film, Dominic stumbles into a reincarnation of his long lost lover (Alexandra Maria Lara) who is promptly possessed by the spirit of an Indian monk from hundreds years past. The spirit’s knowledge helps Dominic pursue his life’s work again.
Coppola doesn’t stop to breathe as he jumps from one genre to the next, only concerned with making the images presented as interesting as possible. Dominic’s life is like the life of a filmmaker: always moving from one world to another. It doesn’t matter what the topic is, because it still represents your body of work. As Dominic tries to piece together the mystery of language, Coppola reaches for the vision that he had for what to make of himself, in the form of surreal dream sequences and upside-down shots that tease us into believing there’s something more mysterious going on. Youth without Youth is always captivating even when it’s deliberately mumbo-jumbo. Like its protagonist’s quest, this film is more about curiosity and discovery rather than the facts. Though rough and stubborn in its attempt to be unusual, there’s mastery in each scene, and that would have to do.
The interesting conflict of the film is with Dominic’s sinister doppelganger, who he argues with constantly, and with the decision he has to make whether or not to choose the completion of his life’s work over love. It’s safe to assume that both of these point towards Coppola’s internal struggle to become the ideal indie filmmaker he loves, and the duty of being a big shot player with a rep to maintain. Youth without Youth is not Apocalypse Now—heck, it ain’t even Dracula—but it is something. Maybe it’s just an experiment from a director fusing pent-up ideas with personal odyssey, and it’s not completely understandable, but at the very least, it’s mind-boggling to watch, and the ideas come across clearly and sympathetically.
"Youth Without Youth" opens December 14, 2007 and is rated R. Drama. Written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Starring Tim Roth, Bruno Ganz, Alexandra Maria Lara.
