Youth Without Youth

Rarely has such a prestigious American director returned to the film industry with so much hype surrounding him. After directing classics like “Apocalypse Now” and the “Godfather” trilogy, Francis Ford Coppola ends his 10-year hiatus with “Youth Without Youth,” a complicated, cerebral film based on a novella by Romanian author Mircea Eliade. Like Coppola, the film’s main character is given an opportunity to reestablish himself. Unfortunately, neither of them succeed in their pursuits.

The film begins in 1938 and follows a once-great, but now-aging professor of linguistics named Dominic (Tim Roth). Intent on ending his life, he takes a stroll through Bucharest armed with an envelope of enough strychnine to do the deed, but a bolt of lightening surges through the sky, hitting his body. After he is taken to the hospital, doctors do not expect him to recover. When one doctor voices his opinion within earshot of the patient, Dominic’s body writhes in pain as he uses all his energy to shout, “I am not mute!” From that point forward, Dominic receives special attention for amassing extraordinary talents and develops a renewed interest in life.

Quickly, the film breaks apart into a meandering mess, ripe with unbelievable plot lines. Doctor Stanciulescu (Bruno Ganz) realizes that Dominic, 70 years old when hit by lightening, has begun to reverse the aging process, both in physique and memory. He also has gained superpowers: He can converse with a double of himself who aids him in intellectual queries, read a book just by touching its cover, and save his own life from a gun-toting Nazi.

Dominic, fluent in a dozen languages, attempts to complete his “life’s work”: The quest to find the origin of language and human consciousness. But he is bogged down by the Nazis, who take a keen interest in his situation and his loneliness.

Coppola starts with a number of promising elements. Stylistically, he keeps the film interesting by incorporating vivid scenery—from a gory hospital visit to a whimsical trip to India—with novel approaches to dream sequences, where the shots begin upside-down. Tim Roth offers an impressive portrayal of Dominic as he appears at 70 and at 35. Roth salvages the boring intellectual banter between Dominic’s doubles as best he can, though the scenes drag.

However, Coppola’s efforts ultimately go astray. By attempting to cover so many disparate topics in one film, the end result feels jumbled and jumpy. Crucial elements of the film fail to develop, leaving the audience confused. The older Dominic acts much too frail in his performance, and such affectations detract from the film’s overall coherence. Dominic’s few interactions with his estranged love Laura (Alexandra Maria Lara) further splinter the film’s cohesion. Ignored for most of the film, their relationship is left very much unexplained, which hinders the audience from connecting with his character or sharing in his joy decades later, when he finds her again.

Lara churns out a good performance in her more intense scenes, such as when she is possessed by a frantic Sumerian-speaker. Otherwise, when called upon for subtle acting in normal conversations, her performance becomes lifeless. Such difficulties may be linked to the fact that English is not the mother tongue of this German/Romanian actress. The language barrier may also account for the usually exceptional Swiss actor Bruno Ganz’s flat depiction.

“Youth Without Youth,” an ambitious film, falls short of success. Coppola tries to compensate for the lack of a coherent storyline and weak performances with grand dramatic music and cinematography, but nothing can mask the disappointing shape of the film.

—Staff writer Michelle L. Cronin can be reached at mlcronin@fas.harvard.edu.