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This is heresy, no doubt, but Francis Ford Coppola's first movie in a decade is a dud.
Get that bonfire going.
Tim Roth stars in the movie as Professor Dominic Matei, an academic of about 70 who is depressed over not having finished his life's work. Worse yet, he has lost his only love, and, dreaming of clocks and skulls (apparently, he's lost his imagination, too) he weeps that he will die alone. It's Easter, 1938, and he decides to get out of town.
He travels to Bucharest, where he is struck by lightning, and -- shades of resurrection -- when he recovers and the bandages come off, our professor Matei is miraculously a young man again.
Moreover, his intelligence and linguistic abilities have increased dramatically, and now he dreams in Chinese and Italian and writes in German as he pursues his passion for linguistics.
His doctor, Professor Stanciulescu (Bruno Ganz) studies Matei with great interest, not that this takes the narrative anywhere, but never mind. Soon enough, the Nazis are interested in this magical intellect, so Matei has to run off to Switzerland. He soon develops a metaphysical double (don't ask), which means two Mateis, and frankly, twice the killing boredom.
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Now it's Geneva and it's 1941, and newspapers slap across the screen with blaring headlines. We find out Matei can magically absorb knowledge just by passing books in front of his face. We find he can predict numbers on the roulette wheel when he needs money. We find we cannot sleep in a movie theatre without getting a stiff neck.
Wait! Did we type that out loud?
Matei meets a beautiful woman (Alexandra Maria Lara) who is a ringer for his lost love. By the time she has an accident and starts babbling in ancient languages and they travel to Malta and France and she goes back farther and farther into linguistic history until it looks as if Matei will finally find the origins of language, we were longing either for the movie to end or for death, whichever came first.
You should know that the film's incomprehensible bits are complemented by much incomprehensible blather. There's a lot of talk about nuclear war and the future and the human race and opportunity. And love and language. What do we do with time? Matei asks. Hint: we do not waste it on this movie.
Youth Without Youth was written, directed and produced by Francis Ford Coppola and is based on the novella by philosopher Mircea Eliade.
(This film is rated 14-A)