YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH
US, 2007, 125 minutes, Colour.
Tim Roth, Maria Alexandra Lara, Marcel Iures.
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
Francis Ford Coppola has not made a film for almost ten years. He has had his ups and downs with his film career, the collapse of his Zoetrope studios and many disappointments. This is reflected in the story he has chosen to tell in Youth Without Youth. It is not a big-budget film, was made quietly in Romania, but has the look and sound of a more ambitious film. But, it is the film that Coppola in his mid-60s wanted to make and make it his way. It is another creative film from the director of The Godfather Trilogy, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, all fine films by anybody’s standards.
The trouble for the average audience is that this is an intellectual film, a philosophical film, a film of comparative religions, and is both emotional and thoughtful. Many may feel that they are not on the wavelength of theme or treatment (maybe no accident that it was made in Europe with a European sensibility rather than American).
For those who are on the wavelength it is an arresting and stimulating film.
The novella was written by Mircea Eliade, a fine writer on comparative religions, who suffered in his native Romania, even spending some time in a concentration camp in the 1940s, who eventually left for the United States in the 1950s. The central character of this story bears some resemblances to Eliade as well as to Coppola: a man who had potential, lamented his not fulfilling it, but a man of ambition and dreams.
Tim Roth gives one his finest and most complex performances as a professor of language. In 1938, he is 70 but has an experience, in-body – out-of-body, that changes him into a physical and intellectual phenomenon, his age and metabolism reversing as his powers of understanding, memory, linguistics and, even, telekinesis increase.
His story is something of an allegory of the experience of many intellectuals of the time: he is tended carefully in his native country, is made a target for research by the Nazi government, escapes to Switzerland living out the war, experiencing the range of cataclysmic world events of the 1940s and into the 1950s. It makes for a different way of looking at that era and what it meant.
The professor’s life is complicated by the appearance of his double and the dialogues he has with his other self, tempting him like a bad conscience. Then he encounters a young woman who is involved in a mountain crash. She also exhibits unusual powers, seemingly the reincarnation of an Indian woman of centuries earlier. There is discussion about metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls, and the same actress, Alexandra Maria Lara, plays the woman, the professor’s lost love of the past and the incarnation of the Indian woman, reinforcing this idea.
The ultimate question, as always, is about personal integrity, love and self-sacrifice.
Coppola is a storyteller and has framed his intellectual explorations within the story. This means the film can have a narrative emotional emphasis while the dialogue can make explicit the more philosophical dimensions of the themes.
It is not going to be a popular film but it is worth seeing by those who want something different from their cinema. It may not enhance Coppola’s reputation as a box-office savvy producer but it will enhance his reputation as a creative film-maker.
1.The work of Coppola, his career, his achievements? Interests? A personal film?
2.A European film, European thought, narrative, production?
3.Mercia Eliade and his career, interests, history, comparative religions? Metaphysics? His short story, the adaptation? Coppola identifying with the central character?
4.Romania in the 1930s, the 1960s? Switzerland in the 1940s? The location photography in India? The settings in Malta? The musical score and its range of moods?
5.The title, Tim Roth and his performance, appearance as old, changing, as younger?
6.The importance of dreams and memories? The influence of Carl Jung? The meaning of the self, the ego, the subconscious? The theme with the double? The opening, the inserts? The revelation of Dominic?
7.1938, Dominic, his age? The storm, the rain, the railway station, the lightning? The umbrella? The accident, his face, injuries, the hospital? Being looked after by the doctor, his condition, reacting? Communication by gripping fingers? Gradually getting the information about him, thinking he was mute, his outburst? The x-rays, the puzzle? His regenerating? The physical explanation? The possibilities?
8.The doctor and his care, personality, the staff, their experience? The discussions, the secrecy? The friendship with the doctor, the effect on Dominic? The arrival of the Gestapo? Dominic’s dream, the woman in the room, the sexuality? Her gathering information? The Nazi doctor and his wanting to get to Dominic? The visuals of his experiments – especially with the horse? The threat?
9.Dominic escaping to the border, the issue of the passport, his being stopped, the sympathetic guard letting him through? The war, moving around in Switzerland, his experiences, work, growing younger? The doctor arriving in Switzerland, the confrontation, the girl, in the street, her being shot? The speech by the Nazi doctor and its plausibility? Dominic and the telekinesis, the killing of the doctor?
10.The use of the collage of newspaper headlines, war information, dates? The recapitulation of the main events of World War Two?
11.The memories of the young woman, studying together, the possibility of love and a future together, his staying with his work? Meeting the young woman who resembled her, in the mountains, the driving, his warning, the accident, going to the police, the search? The dead woman? The survivor? Her transformation, thinking that she was Rupina, her talk about India?
12.Dominic and his growing curiosity, the issue of language? Professor Tucci coming from Italy, the examination of the young woman? The doctors and their tests? The decision to go to India, the meeting with the holy man, the woman waking, the recording of her words, the filming – and the use of the black and white photography? Going to the cave, her discovering it, her fall?
13.Veronica in herself, the accident, the languages, becoming Rupina, the revelations? Recognising Dominic, depending on him, loving him, the marriage, their going to Malta? The experiences, the tape, Dominic and his further investigations, comparing notes, the antique languages? The effect on Veronica? Her despair, going to the sea? Dominic saving her?
14.The theme of the double, his presence all the time, the tempter? Veronica glimpsing him?
15.The importance of love, the bond? Dominic’s decision, seeing Veronica ageing, not wanting her to suffer? The mirror? His decision to leave, the passing of the years, the photo of Veronica and the child, returning to Romania?
16.Romania, the hotel, going back to the café, meeting the old men, their thinking it was 1938, his explaining the future – even the landing on the moon? The issues of time, reality, dream?
17.The theme of the roses, the double giving the rose? The rose with Dominic at the end – Coppola saying that it was a symbol of grace?
18.Themes of identity, psychology, physiology, transmigration of souls, reincarnation, language? The theme of the double? The future?
