Youth Without Youth: DVD, Blu-ray Review (2008)

Leave the movie, take the wine.  

Francis Ford Coppola’s first film in 10 years turns out to be occasionally brilliant and sometimes involving, but mostly so dense and convoluted, it spoils whatever enjoyment might have been had in the process.

Set during World War II, the film is a pretentious grind based on Mircea Eliade’s novella.

It stars Tim Roth as Dominic, an elderly, suicidal linguist electrocuted by lightning who starts to age backwards in a new infusion of youth. For a whole host of bizarre reasons, this causes its share of problems, not the least of which is the involvement of the Third Reich as well as what occurs to the love of his life (Alexandra Maria Lava), who is--you guessed it--struck by another bolt of lightning that ages her.

Tack this onto all sorts of muddled rhetoric about language and consciousness, and what you have is a movie that should be watched after finishing a bottle of one of Coppola’s popular wines.

Rated R. Grade: C-

View the trailer here: