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Year One
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Youth Without Youth
EMAILPRINTSony Pictures Classics

Mixed or average reviews
Based on 29 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 17 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Romance | Suspense/Thriller
Written by: Francis Ford Coppola
Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 14, 2007
DVD: May 13, 2008
Running Time: 124 minutes, Color
Origin: USA / Germany / Italy / France / Romania
Summary
RATING: R for some sexuality, nudity and a brief disturbing image
Starring Tim Roth, Alexandra Maria Lara, Bruno Ganz, and André Hennicke
Dominic Matei is an aging professor of linguistics who finds his youth miraculously restored after surviving a cataclysmic event. Dominic's physical rejuvenation and apparent immortality is matched by a highly evolved intellect, which attracts the attention of Nazi scientists and forces him into exile. While on the run, he reunites with his lost love, Laura, and works to complete his research into the origins of human language. When his research threatens Laura's health, Dominic is forced to choose between his life's work and the great love of his life. (Sony Classics)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Apocalypse Now Redux Dracula Jack One from the Heart (re-release) Rumble Fish Tetro The Conversation The Godfather The Godfather: Part II The Godfather: Part III The Outsiders The Rainmaker Tucker: The Man and His Dreams
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
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.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
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.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
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.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
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.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
Tt is a comeback, and if it leads the director to better work, it can be forgiven as a warm-up.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
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.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
Too much of the film is a muddle, and it feels like work, not play.
Read Full Review >Premiere Glenn Kenny
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.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano
Ultimately, Youth Without Youth is more intriguing than it is satisfying. It hooks you, then lets you flounder.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
In the context of Coppola's life and career, the film has a searching intelligence and ambition that can't be entirely dismissed; with his own money and nobody looking over his shoulder, Coppola has gone uprriver again in an effort to reinvent himself and cinema in the process. He ultimately fails, but he can't be faulted for trying.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
An ambitious but mind-numbingly tedious and often incomprehensible film.
Read Full Review >New York Post Kyle Smith
I understood two words of Youth Without Youth: "The End."
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
Coppola's awkward screenplay never finds its tone -- or perhaps it deliberately evokes the pulp conventions of WWII adventures, horror films, weepy melodrama, psychological mysteries and superhero origin stories as a way of evoking the fundamental artificiality of the cinema. Either way, it never comes together into a cohesive whole, and is seriously undermined by Roth's morose performance.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Lush and heartfelt, but compelling only in fits and starts.
Read Full Review >Slate Dana Stevens
A vast, lumbering white elephant of a movie--but I sort of love it.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
At its best, the movie's crazy in unexpected and poetic ways; at its worst, merely preposterous.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
I'm all for bold screwiness, but this provocation seems labored despite the striking images.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
Unfortunately, "Youth" becomes so lost in its own conceptual, convoluted vortex, it becomes virtually incomprehensible. Coppola proves that even the best of our film artists can lose sight of what this medium is all about: entertaining, enlightening and including its audience.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
The essence of Youth Without Youth, which was shot -- luminously -- in Romania, lies in its solemn speculations about aging, time and consciousness. Mr. Coppola is one of the cinema's peerless masters, and I would have enjoyed nothing more than a chance to celebrate his new film. I'm truly sorry to say, then, that I found it impenetrable.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett
Lacking coherence and suspense, the picture is likely to attract a cult following while disappointing Coppola's fan base.
Read Full Review >Variety Jay Weissberg
Attempting to harness multiple genres, pic is brought down by ponderous dialogue (much of it dubbed) and an inability to connect with its characters.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
Whatever it was in Romanian philosopher Mircea Eliade's novella Youth Without Youth that drew Francis Coppola out of a 10-year retirement to make a movie, the result is the year's most bizarre novelty item.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
The film is a sharp disappointment to those who have been waiting for 10 years since the master's last film. The best that can be hoped is that, having made a film, Coppola has the taste again, and will go on to make many more, nothing like this.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
Coppola never manages to get his themes to coalesce into anything terribly coherent.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
Most certainly a personal work -- so personal, in fact, that I can't imagine anyone but Coppola being able to sit through it.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
It's merely nutty, a picture that appears to have been made by an individual who has fallen off the edge of reason. Watching it was misery.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
The movie is one soporific, depressed, deadeningly vague scene after another.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 5.2 (out of 10) based on 17 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Zakiya K gave it a10:
This is one of the most intriguing movie I have ever experienced. It was so immense and captivating. I was drawn into the storyline and felt each scene as unfold.. Professor Dominique's character was so immmensed and realistic. I loved this movie so much! Thank you Francis Coppola.> This was a masterpiece creation.
Michel C. gave it a3:
They said that there was nudity in the movie, but not enough in my opinion. At the beginning it's quite satisfying with that german spy chick, but it goes dry afterwards. Just when you think he's gonna fuck that Veronica, she grows old and you know there's almost 0 chance that you'll see sex again in the movie.
Michael B gave it a2:
I can't believe I watched the entire thing.....whatever it was.
Henrique L gave it a7:
A enormous work, hard shoting, maybe too long, explendid dry flowers, starring Alexandra Maria Lara.
Chad S. gave it a4:
Lightning strikes, and an old man becomes young again. A man who never ages is enough story for one film, but Dominic(Tim Roth), on top of being vampiric, also has conversations with a doppleganger. And then there's his baffling superpower; Dominic has the ability to read books with the wave of a single hand(English majors will read this as an inside joke). If "Youth Without Youth" had a studio mentality, it would be "The Fugitive" with gorgeous cinematography. But then, lightning strikes again, and the film veers into "Altered States" territory. That Dominic would encounter a woman whose lingering byproduct of the electrical jolt, gives him just the right empirical information to finish his life's work, is just too paradigmatic for comfort.
Rez G. gave it a10:
I think The Visual version of this novel which written by Caplavoro Di has done , I'm not a fan but I learned so many things from this Production .
Jay H. gave it a4:
Directors who can't edit their films to a reasonable length due to narcissism drive me crazy. Any movie, such as this one, that has painfully slow moving scenes needs to be edited and shortened. Other than that, the period detail is exquisite, fine costumes and cinematography. The story is fair, at best. As with so many of Coppola's films, there are flashes of brilliance, accompanied by too much pretension. Perhaps if he would get off his pedestal and actually watch one of his films...(The Godfather trilogy excluded..)
