FemaleFirst.co.uk: DVD: Youth Without Youth [DVD] [2007]

Youth Without Youth [DVD] [2007]
enlarge	Director: Francis Ford Coppola Actors: Tim Roth, Alexandra Maria Lara, Bruno Ganz, André Hennicke, Marcel Iures Studio: Pathe Distribution Category: DVD List Price: ~~£19.99~~ Buy New: £5.23 as of 25/11/2009 00:26 GMT details You Save: £14.76 (74%) New (10) from £5.23 Seller: twentyfiveorless Rating: 4 reviews Sales Rank: 35948 Format: PAL Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over Region: 2 Number Of Discs: 1 Running Time: 121 Minutes Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2 Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6 EAN: 5060002835951 ASIN: B0012OTRP2 Theatrical Release Date: 2007 Release Date: April 21, 2008 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days


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Customer Reviews: Transcendent April 15, 2008 R. F. McDade (London) 5 out of 5 found this review helpful Usually I can predict what is going to happen (more or less) after watching the first act of most films, but Youth Without Youth rips up the usual template and attempts to take you on a journey where the end is never in sight. It isn't wholly successful but is never less than stimulating and involving. It is the polar opposite of 99.9% of other films - the narrative is linear and yet manages to suggest that time is anything but. The ending is beautiful, explaining all yet at the same time throwing into doubt everything you have just watched. If Daniel Day-Lewis had played the lead in this film it would have had accolades heaped upon it. As it is, Tim Roth does his best to hold things together but - by his own admission - he does not quite understand what the director was trying to say and it shows. I was utterly captivated by this film. Deeply flawed but still wonderful, this is a glorious, crazy mess of a masterpiece. Coppola's modern masterpiece February 7, 2008 Alister King (London, England) 1 out of 2 found this review helpful Coppola's modern masterpiece if you have the brains and patience for it. Tim Roth just about holds it altogether. Work of absolute genius or Surreal waste of time? July 9, 2008 Farah Yousif (Kuwait) 2 out of 2 found this review helpful For me: this film is either a work of absolute genius or is a surreal waste of time. The film captures your attention at the start; I like the `shock' element of seeing Tim Roth doubling in personality - this was done very well and adds a `dark' element to the film that keeps you on edge. The film also contains originality in that it's difficult for me to think of another film through which it can be compared. br / br /The themes covered are interesting e.g. conflict between `good and evil', and the exploration of the origins of language appealed to me as a linguist. Unfortunately, I think there were too many ideas in the film and each one wasn't portrayed in enough depth. The plot lacked some-what and at the end of the film I felt a bit cheated because I was expecting something `more'. Overall: worth seeing but perhaps not owning. br / Empty and pretentious, but some nice photography November 29, 2008 Triestino (Trieste, Italy) 3 out of 5 found this review helpful An elderly professor is struck by lightning outside a railway station in Romania in 1938, is taken to a clinic, and begins to turn into a young man - the process beginning with his teeth falling out all over the polished floor of the hospital ward. Over in Germany, the Nazis get to know what has happened and try to capture the rejuvenated professor to see if they can replicate the process using artificial lightning, presumably for purposes of creating a master race. But their plot is foiled, and the professor spends the war in Switzerland, where he suddenly realizes that he knows every almost every language spoken on earth. Sexy sultry women in lingerie come and go. One must be a Nazi spy because there is a swastika symbol embroidered on to her suspender belt. br / br /The war ends and the professor, apparently in his 40s but really in his 80s, is out hiking in the Swiss mountains one day when he meets two women riding in a VW convertible. Lightning later strikes the women, kills one, and turns the other into someone who goes into trances in which she can speak Pali, Sanskrit, and ancient Egyptian. br / br /She is promptly rushed in a Hercules aircraft (appearing a good 30 years ahead of its time, but no matter) to a cave west of Delhi, where a skeleton and a mouldering book are found. At this point things lose what little clarity they had to begin with, but the professor and the semi-deranged woman - you know, the one who was struck by lightning after getting out of her VW - end up in Malta (or is it Bermuda?) and the professor gets really excited (we know because his facial muscles start twitching) for he finds that his lady friend can speak languages that are more and more ancient, and he happens to be trying to write a book on the origins of language. His doppelganger, whose presence is never explained (an id, or alter ego, perhaps) chats to him with increasing frequency. Finally the professor, to save his lady friend terminally collapsing through ancient linguistic exhaustion, takes a train back to Romania where he meets his old friends. But unaccountably he finds himself back to 1938, becomes an old man again, and dies in the snow. br / br /What does it all mean, mother? Who knows? Who cares? Suffice it to say that this poorly thought-out film will please no-one: not science fiction buffs, nor horror story addicts, nor those who like a nice romance, nor those who admire a well-crafted thriller. br / br /If the film had been half its length of two hours, the tale, prodigiously silly though it is, might have kept the interest, but as it is, it meanders on and on, portentously and heavily, and becomes more and more pretentious as it goes along. One gets the feeling that the director quickly ran out of ideas, and all kinds of ploys (shooting scenes upside down, or sideways on, or in black and white) are resorted to in a futile attempt to imbue the exercise with "originality" and "significance". br / br /Francis Ford Coppola has given us some marvellous films, The Godfather included. This is most decidedly not one of those films - in fact it must be one of the worst he has ever made. Two stars, then, but only for the photography, which is sometimes excellent. Whatever else you do, try before you buy. br /

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