Youth Without Youth (2007/Sony Blu-ray + DVD-Video)
Picture: B+/C+ Sound: B+/B Extras: B- Film: B-
It has
been ten years already since Francis Coppola delivered the underrated legal
thriller The Rainmaker (reviewed
elsewhere on this site) from the John Grisham book and I have pleasantly
enjoyed a recent wave of friends and associates discovering how good it really
is. Because it was not some grand epic
like The Godfather or Apocalypse Now that critics wanted to
rally around, he was too quickly abandoned by the critics and the additional
abandonment by the film theory crowd has been nothing short of
inexcusable. But that has not stopped
Coppola from working and innovating, even on his time off.
Youth Without Youth was released towards the end of
2007 and once again, it did not get anywhere near the attention it deserved,
which is amazing considering how much the first two Godfather are being overplayed on cable TV (no pun intended)
criminally to death. So what gives? Was it a disappointment? Did it not work?
Well, the
premise itself is from a short story by Mircea Eliade, a very good idea and one
that is more than interesting enough that once you read the following, you will
wonder why you had not heard of it.
70-year-old
Dominic Matei (Tim Roth, impressive in one of his best roles to date) is a
linguistics professor who never seems to have enough time to finish his
work. He is a smart man on the cutting
edge of his field and one night, when he wonders out into the cold, is hit by a
lighting bolt. Instead of killing him,
it starts to reverse his age to the point that he is suddenly 40 years
old. Doctors at the hospital he is
admitted to are stunned, but he is soon on his way. Unfortunately, this is Europe in the early
1930s and the Nazis are on the march.
They know of him, his case and suddenly want him captured.
Usually,
this would be the set-up for a great Science Fiction/Thriller, but instead of
going the shallow obvious route, Coppola decides to make this a character study
and adds the twist of an old romance in Dominic’s life that adds to the stakes
of what he will do or not do with his life, if he gets away from those who
would like to capture him and make him an experimental guinea pig for the rest
of his life. Even worse, if the Nazis
can figure out why this is happening, they could take the findings and use it
to make their soldiers all the tougher to kill and realize their sick dreams of
a super-race!
Coppola’s
script does not spoon feed this to the audience, making it as challenging at
times as The Conversation, but it is
also made with an intelligence and maturity those who recently enjoyed the
likes of No Country For Old Men will
be happy to jump into. There is nuance,
subtlety, detail and a world of sexually mature, three-dimensional people
filling this world as is the case with the best of Coppola’s work (even when
they are teens in his Hinton adaptations, they are realistic teens) and Youth never fails at this.
The cast
is also very good, including Bruno Ganz, but I was just constantly impressed
how realized Coppola’s cinematic vision (especially in visual language) was
realized throughout. He can out-direct
just about anyone alive and for the few who are on his high level, can keep up
with any of them. He is one of the great
architects of cinema, not just in the U.S., but worldwide, something he never
says but it just a flat-out fact. Just
when you think you have scene some of the worst films ever made, here is a
genius who picks up a new technology like HD, shoots a feature this rich and
proves cinema is far from dead. For
serious film fans, Youth Without Youth
is a must-see, the kind you’ll want to watch over & over and is a real
treasure to behold.
Of the
few non-comedy features shot in digital High Definition that were consistent,
consistent looking and worked (Fincher’s Zodiac,
Tony Scott’s Déjà vu, Sidney Lumet’s
Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead, Scott
Frank’s The Lookout, Roger
Donaldson’s The Bank Job), the 1080p
2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image here pushes HD color like no other HD
production to date. While the other
films are rich thrillers with a muted color look, without gutting the color,
Coppola and his Director of Photography Mihai Malaimare, Jr. push the format
into new territory as soon as the first scene.
In the
credits, the red rose becomes an ironic image and a great demo, as Video Red is
the color HD has yet to conquer. For any
HD system, the less maroon and more natural this looks, the better your system
is reproducing red in general. There are
some moments of slight motion blur and places where the Video Black is weak,
along with other minor flaws, but it is a good looking production on par with One From The Heart (reviewed elsewhere
on this site) and Tucker, putting
into action some interesting ideas that Coppola has about misé-en-scene that
are distinctly his. The anamorphically
enhanced DVD is not bad, but Video Black is weak throughout and the low def
format has difficulties with the color Blu-ray does not.
The Dolby
TrueHD 5.1 mix on the Blu-ray is very good, with articulate dialogue, Osvaldo
Golijov’s impressive music score and a distinct sound mix by the editor of the
image, the amazing Walter Murch who has been working with Coppola for
decades. The Dolby Digital 5.1 on the
DVD is actually one of the best Dolby mixes we have heard on any DVD and proves
once again (as the DVD of Apocalypse Now
did) that no one knows how get maximum performance out of the limited and now
dated Dolby Digital 12:1 compression scheme as Coppola and Murch do. The mix also has fine passages of silence,
interesting ambiance sound and is succeeds in furthering the narrative very
effectively.
Extras
are the same on both versions and include another must-hear feature length
audio commentary by Coppola and three fine featurettes on the making of the
film. One is on the music, one on the
make-up and one on the overall production.
Sony has come up with two top rate versions in their formats for this
underrated release and hopefully, Youth
Without Youth will be quickly picked up and rediscovered as the ambitious
Coppola original it is. Blu-ray fans
will want this one ASAP!
- Nicholas Sheffo
