"And then I walked into my bedroom but it wasn't really my bedroom, you know? And then...hello? You still there?"
It’s fitting that Youth Without Youth, Francis Ford Coppola’s first
directorial effort in a decade, is steeped in the idea of dreams.
That’s because it often feels like one—specifically, someone else’s, a
nonlinear, illogical synapse explosion that’s always fascinating to the
person in whose head it detonated but not so much to those experiencing
it secondhand. The film speaks of time, death, knowledge, love,
duality, reincarnation, Nazis, nuclear war. It even ventures into
superhero territory, for God’s sake, though in this case, Coppola’s
Superman is more Nietzsche’s than DC Comics’.
The movie, which the director adapted from a novella by Romanian
writer Mircea Eliade, isn’t as spectacularly unsuccessful as another
recent toss-spaghetti-at-the-wall film, Southland Tales, though.
Whereas that Richard Kelly disaster was tonally schizophrenic and
generally ludicrous, Coppola’s epic is merely ponderous, two-plus hours
of high-minded, professorial musings as rambled by a jacked-up college
freshman. And to its credit, Youth Without Youth is never uninteresting.
The film’s fustiness announces itself right away, with a static,
anciently styled opening-credits sequence featuring a giant rose, a
European-flavored score, and gilded letters announcing the film’s
“star,” Alexandra Maria Lara. Never mind that the true lead is Tim
Roth—putting the man first wouldn’t be gentlemanly, after all, and
Coppola clearly wants you to feel as if you’re watching the latest
talkie. Then begins the inarguably engrossing story of Dominic (Roth),
a lonely, 70-year-old professor in 1938 Romania who’s mocked by his
bored students and so burdened by the torch he carries for the love he
lost in his 20s that he’s contemplating suicide. Fate, however, has a
funny way of intervening: Dominic is struck by lightning—a stunningly
violent, fiery scene—but even though it knocks him into a “larval
state,” it doesn’t kill him. In fact, though his teeth fall out, X-rays
show that new ones are growing in. And when the doctors finally remove
the bandages, Dominic looks not like a septuagenarian but a bachelor no
older than 40.
He’s also got quite the mind. He’s a linguistics professor, but
Dominic suddenly can now speak pretty much any known language and feels
as if he understands concepts other people don’t even know they don’t
know. What a relief, then, that he has a debate partner in his double,
a slightly sinister-looking Roth who appears in mirrors à la the Green
Goblin. Also, Dominic can read books, and later other people’s dreams,
just by passing his hand over them. And in a crunch, he discovers that
telekinesis is a welcome new skill as well. (Try not to laugh when
Dominic is asked, in all seriousness, if he’s going to “use his powers
for good or for evil.”) For all these reasons, Hitler and his doctors
are eager to cozy up to him, so Dominic assumes a new identity and
spends time in Switzerland while finishing his “life’s work.”
If only that were all there was to the story. But that’s just the
first half—we still have to get to Veronica (Lara), a woman who
regresses through centuries of lifetimes and languages after being
struck by lightning herself and just might be Dominic’s old flame. And
though this subplot, too, is rather riveting, its ideas never quite
connect to the film as a whole, despite an overall arc that suggests a
self-balancing universe. Lara is marvel here, creating stellar, often
terrifying moments out of past-life scenes that could have been
ridiculous. Roth is solid in a difficult role as well; his
friend-or-foe doppelgänger sequences may not quite work, but that seems
more the fault of the director than the actor.
Even if you tune out the philosophy, Youth Without Youth is too
beautifully photographed to completely lose your attention. Shot
digitally and transferred to 35 mm film, the movie alternates between
cold exteriors of muted colors against white and interiors warm with
flame-inspired reds and golds. Less successful is Coppola’s dalliance
with askew frames, turning scenes upside-down and sideways; they
visually layer the film’s reality-bending themes but are nonetheless
irritating. The director has claimed that this is a very personal movie
to him, and certainly one can understand how its ideas of regrets,
wasted time, and personal betterment at any age might appeal to a
filmmaker in the twilight of his career. It’s just too meandering and
starched to let viewers catch his enthusiasm.
Trust me, fellas, you don't want to remember this
The Bucket List is a
bizarro brother to Coppola’s muddled but dignified meditation on aging
and death. The film’s trailers suggest the triteness you’re in for, and
Morgan Freeman’s opening narration—the same wise-old-black-man spiel
that ruined The Shawshank Redemption and once again bristles
here—seconds it. And the entire Rob Reiner–directed sick-buddy dramedy,
boasting the odd-couple pairing of Freeman and Jack Nicholson,
delivers. Even scripter Justin Zackham seems to know the drivel he’s
dishing out. When Nicholson’s cancer-ridden character learns of the
concept of the “bucket list”—a catalog of all the stuff you want to do
before you kick said bucket—his response is an apt description for the
movie. “Cutesy,” he says, dismissively.
That said, Reiner’s film isn’t terrible, just flat—though
lifelessness is a pretty damning characteristic in a story about living
it up before you die. Freeman’s Carter is a mechanic who dropped out of
college when his wife became pregnant. Forty-five years later, their
relationship is tepid, and it gets no warmer once he learns he has
cancer. Meanwhile, Nicholson’s Edward, a wealthy bachelor and
businessman with a special interest in buying hospitals, is still
kicking—until he squawks to a board of a new property that the facility
is to have “two beds to a room, no exceptions.” Almost immediately
after the words come out of his mouth, he coughs up blood. Later, he
wakes up next to Carter, naturally demanding that he be granted an
exception to the roommate policy. Plus, he likes superfancy coffee,
while Carter thinks Chock Full o’ Nuts is aces. Let the wackiness begin.
The film’s title comes into play when Carter begins composing his
to-do list; his choices are largely philosophical and selfless, and
Edward declares them “extremely weak.” (Zackham’s self-awareness
again?) Edward has the cash, so he adds sports cars, sky-diving, and
loads of travel to Carter’s to-dos, persuades him to spend his final
days with him instead of his wife, and off they go.
Like Youth Without Youth, The Bucket List has some sweet
cinematography going for it—pyramids, polar caps, and the Great Wall
are gorgeously depicted—but little else. Almost nothing feels genuine
here, from the men’s friendship (knowing chuckles can take even the
best actors only so far) to their whooping last hurrahs (an
already-dull drag race is accompanied by an excruciating cover of ZZ
Top’s “Tush”) to the by-the-numbers heartstring-tugging (a cute widdle
granddaughter! dramatic collapses!). Worse, Reiner likes to highlight,
underline, and add exclamation points to the story, such as having
Carter react to bad news first with a slack-jawed dropping of his
cigarette and later with a forceful crumpling of his list. Freeman at
least had the right idea with the latter—it’s what he and Nicholson
should have done when they first eyed the script.
