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the audience applauded

Absolutely Fantastic

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Blistering performances.

This is an intriguing pleasant movie which takes you through several stages of suspension of disbelief and then leaves you with "in the end it was all a dream?"However, I can guess that the book format would fit more with the philosophical aspects of it. You can see that a lot of big philosophical questions are approached by the mechanics of doubling your personality through multiple consciousnesses, then mixed with Orientalism and soul transfers... even some telekinesis... in short, it's a bit of a mess. Still pleasant to watch, but you get the feeling that there would be a deeper message or at least more development into the various teams, but instead we have more like a short safari through various aspects of these beliefs.The love story part of it is also not particularly interesting - it offers, for no reason, a duality between work and love. The love is the sort that is automatic and axiomatic - the work is seen as very interesting but we only know it's about the origin of languages and, purportedly, their evolution into something post modern languages. Guessing that since it doesn't really exist (if it ever will) limits recounting anything about the future, but the past analysis is also not particularly developed.So, pleasant watch, but nothing to get particularly excited or introspective.

This was a wonderful movie. Before I watched Youth without Youth I knew before hand that it was little bit on Coppola's experimental side. I also was bit of skeptical on the rating here on IMDb. I was gladly surprised, it was way better than I expected to.First of all, like others have said here, it relays on philosophy quite a lot. Many don't like that but for me, it couldn't be better. The story revolves around linguist who is trying to discover the original protolanguage, but on the same time the power to do that is sucked from elsewhere. In the end the protagonist needs to select either his life work or love. In the meantime it handles the questions of language, the questions of life, the questions of epistemology. Is the knowledge the ultimate goal in life as it's often regarded in philosophy (love for wisdom as its translates from Greek)?But the movie handles a lot more than just that and it's amazing how it does it. It gives view for development of man. How differently one behaves in younger or older age. Tim Roth's acting was good on this part. While Dominic, the protagonist, became younger you could see the there still was the walking style of elder. The movie has a glimpse of schizophrenia in it when the double comes in to the play. That gives very interesting view on psychology. The psychology is reflected to philosophy by mirrors. Very modern indeed and some may think that little pretentious.A lot of these things can probably credited to the original novel by Mircea Eliade which I haven't read; the plot is just brilliant (on most parts).Problem is, however, that sometimes something just felt out of the place. In the beginning acting was absolutely horrible and the lighting effect, well... I had to cringe. The opening titles were beautifully done but the lighting, oh the lighting, it just burned my eyes and not by being realistic. I wonder how did Coppola even pass something like that to the movie. But I guess it was for to bring the nostalgic feel that came through many times through out the movie. Of course it was set on 1938 to 1960s but the movie also reminded about the old cinema. It gave some sort of meta-fiction to the movie but not too much that you would be distracted by it. The opening titles is a good example of that nostalgia. It was somewhat clichéd how the plot continued. The scene on the rocky beach for example, that was just stupid but on the other hand one could but that on the meta-fiction part.In the end the movie really makes you think and has very good cinematography. I would recommend Youth without Youth to all those who have even that little something on the artistic side.

I thought this film really presented in two parts, the first half was engaging and as usual Tim Roth holds the imagination. However in the second half of the film it seemed to loose its way a little, I struggled to get where it was going. Despite an interest in the themes represented and an understanding of the philosophy and religious concepts addressed I really struggled to engage with the plot/story. I will watch this again because I know there are depths to be mined. However i was left feeling disappointed. I stayed with the film but found it increasingly difficult to feel for the characters as it progressed. Too many concepts interwoven with out sufficient meaning. Way better than most productions and worth a watch but don't expect too much.

A note first on style, to me, Youth Without Youth, is one of the most gorgeous modern films, it's one of the few films where the production team are exerting control to the extent when they can be described as using a palette. In this case the colours orange and blue predominate beautifully. There has been some suggestion in modern criticism, particularly in Sight & Sound, that "orange & teal" is a ugly fad that no-one will miss, I think Youth Without Youth is definitely deserving of special treatment. Certainly the blue here is less dingy than elsewhere in the "orange & teal" canon. The film is about a once brilliantly gifted scholar, Dominik Mattei (played by Tim Roth), who appears to have wasted his life, and is now an old man, when suddenly he gets a second chance and returns to youth. The film is interesting, how did he waste his life? Is it because he didn't complete his life's work, a great book which was to contain a grand unifying theory on consciousness and the origins of language, or because he didn't pay enough attention to his beloved Laura?There are two main points of interest in the film for me, one relates to the allure of the situation Mattei is in and the dilemma it presents, and the other to the structure. As a teenager I read Daniel Keyes' 1959 novella Flowers For Algernon, which, in two different forms, has the rare prestige of having won both of science fiction's key writing awards, the Hugo and the Nebula. It's about an experiment performed on Charlie, a man with a very low IQ, who as a result of the experiment, progressively becomes the most intelligent man alive. At one point he criticises the scientist who performs the experiment, mentioning that the best rebuttal of his theories yet written has come from India. The scientist says he has not ever heard of the document which he discovers was written in Hindustani, and which he was therefore not in the position to read anyway. Charlie records, "I asked Dr. Strauss how Nemur could refute Rahajamati's attack on his method and results if Nemur couldn't even read them in the first place. That strange look on Dr. Strauss' face can mean only one of two things. Either he doesn't want to tell Nemur what they're saying in India, or else - and this worries me - Dr. Strauss doesn't know either."One key point of Flowers For Algernon, and also this film, is the allure of supernatural intelligence: what would our thoughts be if we had IQs in the thousands and could read books at a glance? The key tone of the Flowers is sadness, as we find that Charlie's new found faculties are temporary in nature and subside gradually. This tone dovetails with the film as well, because another of the key features of both artworks is the conflict between intellect and emotion. Is it more important to love, or to embrace aloof intellectual pursuits? My slanter tells you all you need to know about my position! In any case it's a very sad story, and I believe that is the heart of Youth Without Youth as well, it's an elegy.The parts of the film where senile Mattei is shown are very poignant and remind me of Mr Blank from Paul Auster's book Travels in the Scriptorium. Both men are vaguely aware of their past mistakes, and also both men are utterly alienated. A kind of tender nastiness pervades these bits if that isn't too oxymoronic. Francis Ford Coppola has mentioned his identification with Mattei, particularly regarding his failure to complete his sci-fi project Megalopolis.My other point concerns the structure. There's a passage towards the end where the Mattei describes an oriental tale of a dream where a prince dreams that he is a butterfly which dreams it is a prince, who dreams he was a butterfly (et cetera). It's not clear in this film just which parts are dreamt, and which not, or whether that matters. It's more that the overall aesthetic conception of Mattei's story of the prince and the butterfly is what matters. In this sense it is similar to the Saragossa Manuscript or the 1001 Arabian Nights, where it is, to a large extent, the structure itself that intoxicates.There is also the issue of familiar to readers of Watchmen, of whether demi-god powers should be used for good or evil (whether indeed it is right to interfere in human destiny at all), or whether they should be directed internally towards solipsism. This makes Roth is well cast, he is a typecast baddie, and this aura of badness here allows this ambiguity to take root. The film also sounds wonderful, and this is mainly due to the ethereal tone of the cymbalom. If you liked Tim Roth in this film I suggest you watch another movie in which he stars, The Legend of 1900 directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, which is also wonderful in a similar enigmatic way.And this review is dedicated to Claire, who is the first rose.