Youth Without Youth

This film's playful visual language pulls you in rather than shuts you out; it isn't difficult to decipher, and it enables Coppola and his editor, Walter Murch, to navigate the story's many realms with a directness and dexterity that are refreshing. more

Half the time in the mystical saga Youth Without Youth, I had no idea what the movie was about, but I always felt that the director and screenwriter, Francis Ford Coppola, did, and that he was deeply in tune--and having a hell of a time--with the material. more

For all its fussy lighting, upside-down camera angles, and overwrought impressionism, Youth Without Youth is essentially playful. It's also pleasantly meandering in its largely faked locations, and drolly matter-of-fact about its mystic visions. more

In this film Mr. Coppola blurs dreams and everyday life and suggests that through visual and narrative experimentation he has begun the search for new ways of making meaning, new holy places for him and for us. He may not have found them yet, but, then, he's just waking up. more

Tt is a comeback, and if it leads the director to better work, it can be forgiven as a warm-up. more

Beautiful but empty. more

Too much of the film is a muddle, and it feels like work, not play. more

As a fan and well-wisher of Coppola's, I wanted very much to like this movie, and I'll probably give it another shot once the DVD comes out. But, at first sight, Youth Without Youth's striving for exuberance reveals an almost desperate effort too much of the time. more

How's this for a ringing endorsement: Watching Youth Without Youth, Francis Ford Coppola's first film in nearly a decade, is like taking a philosophy exam. A really tiring philosophy exam, where the questions are elegantly phrased but damn confounding and not really conducive to right answers. more

Ultimately, Youth Without Youth is more intriguing than it is satisfying. It hooks you, then lets you flounder. more

YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH is for this viewer one of the most creative and genuinely intelligent and beautiful films to be released in some time. Francis Ford Coppola has utilized the finest points of his gifts as a movie creator and the result is a mesmerizing, quasi-hallucinatory exploration of the fine book by the Romanian writer Mircea Eliade. Not only is Coppola's screenplay challenging and complex, it is also a well-developed guide to making visual the concept of Eliade's at times perplexing story. The cinematography by Mihai Malaimare Jr. is moody and captures the surrealism of the tale,... more

Finally a relief to the drivel the studios push out. Youth Without Youth stimulates one's intellect in a philosophical way. You have to give it a chance so a few viewings without the distractions is recommended. Select subtitles for better absorption of what is being said. It is rather deep and calls for an open mind. If you can be gripped by the story that is driven by early languages, a story that explores Eastern philosophy, the various dimensions of ones consciousness, then you'll like this movie. It is a personal film for Coppola, not one he did to make money to fund other films he... more

****1/2 2007. Based on Mircea Eliade's Youth Without Youth , this film was written, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Struck by a lightning, a 70 years old Romanian teacher survives and is rewarded by the ability to live a second life that will allow him to assimilate the whole human Knowledge. This is a haunting movie dealing with important themes such as time, love, oldness or Man's origin, it kept me awake late last night long after its ending. I wouldn't qualify this film as arty because its form and its story aren't incomprehensible for the lambda viewer. The themes... more