Youth Without Youth

PëRMBLEDHJE

Francis Ford Coppola's return to directing after a ten-year break is by turns clumsy and visually extraordinary, confusing and stunningly old-fashioned, and sees The Godfather maverick returning to the big themes of his earliest works. Beginning in Romania in 1938, the film opens with ageing linguistics professor Dominic Matei (Tim Roth) getting struck by lightning. But instead of dying, he has his youth miraculously restored, and his intellect becomes highly evolved. He attracts unwanted Nazi attention, so escapes Romania and travels the world incognito for the next 30 or so years to complete his research on the origins of language. Roth appears in many guises, including Matei's doppelganger, and his performance grounds the movie. The film draws upon a wide array of languages and also includes references to science fiction, film noir and Yasujiro Ozu, all of which lend this political and philosophical ode to lost love an experimental texture. But with its heavy imagery and overreaching academic tone, Coppola's conceit baffles more than it enlightens about the human condition.