A complex and challenging film, from one of the great American directors, and part of the continuing magical adventures of Tim Roth(The Legend Of 1900), this time around Roth is a linguistics professor trying to develop a theory of the origins of hum...(read more)an language and consciousness at his 70th birthday when he is struck by lightening that reverts him to his youth. Not only is he younger, but he discovers he can read whole books in minutes, see into dreams, and in the films most outlandish moments some limited telekinesis(but in all fairness it's his only way to stop an evil Nazi scientist who wants to jump start human evolution through electro shock). From there our hero meets a women who resembles one he used to know, who is similarly struck by lightening or near lightening which causes her to regress into previous lives. Naturally the two fall in love, and the odd couple are happy enough until her ancient language fits, get more frequent, and dive further and further into primitive languages, much to Roth's joy, though his love ages more and more with each regression.
Like I said Youth Without Youth is an ambitious mix of science fiction, world war 2 spy espionage, romance, meditation on death, aging, linguistics, the origins of consciousness, time, philosophy, the atomic bomb, multiple personalities, and reincarnation.
Watching Youth Without Youth is a bit like reading an overwrought but well written novel, where you can appreciate the skill of the speaker's use of language more than any profound statement being made. Not that Coppola's subjects are not profound, or treated, so, just that's it's done in such a way that at first view it's going to go over just about everyone's head. Author Mircea Eliade, is better known as a religious historian and academic, whose work is as rigorous as his fiction offerings. This is a well made and well performed film, but it's zeal gets ahead of itself on more than one occasion.
