Movie Review - 'Youth Without Youth'

Youth Without Youth

Starring Tim Roth and Alexandria Maria Lara
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Rated R

Francis Ford Coppola has never told as complicated a story as the one dying to get out in Youth Without Youth. And that's saying something, because Coppola directed the Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now. On top of its complexities, Youth Without Youth has two very determined leading performances - by Tim Roth and European actress Alexandra Maria Lara - and one beautifully photographed scene after another.

Unfortunately, the story is borderline impenetrable, and if it clears that hurdle, there's still every likelihood that you just won't care about any of it.

There really is no short version of the story, but let's at least connect the major dots: Tim Roth plays a college professor named Dominic who kind of spontaneously combusts during World War I. Though he miraculously lives, the astonishing part is he's no longer the 70-year-old he was at the time of the accident, but a man of maybe 35 or 40. Fast forward 20 years, to the next war, and he's still the same age.

Dominic, one of the world's great linguists (and now that he's 90, he's had plenty of time to study), happens upon a beautiful tourist named Veronica (Lara), who has a bizarre out-of-body experience in which she believes herself a member of an ancient civilization, even speaking Sanskrit for a while.

Obviously, her troubles fascinate Dominic, and at the same time he falls in love with her and wants her to recover from her spells, the scientist in him becomes obsessed with her nightmarish episodes, believing he can eventually trace her speech all the way back to man's initial prehistoric language.

It's both an odd way to tell a story and an odd thing to make a movie about, and it's easy to see why Coppola fell in love with the notion of making this film. But Youth Without Youth is just too complicated. I don't mean too complicated for viewers or viewing, just too complicated to make in this medium, the way he has chosen to make it.

For the majority of the time, Youth Without Youth doesn't feel like it's going anywhere; how could it when it has to stop every three minutes to establish what out-of-the-box development it will invest itself in next? You're no closer to its resolution two hours in than you were 30 minutes in, spoiling some great scenes between Roth and Lara.

And finally, at the risk of giving away the ending, nothing that happens prior to the final chain of events is necessary for that chain of events to transpire.

 It's an incredibly frustrating way to end two very perplexing hours.