Youth Without Youth

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.

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.

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.

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.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

Beautiful but empty.

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.

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.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

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

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.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

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

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.

USA Today Claudia Puig

An ambitious but mind-numbingly tedious and often incomprehensible film.

New York Post Kyle Smith

I understood two words of Youth Without Youth: "The End."

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.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Lush and heartfelt, but compelling only in fits and starts.

Slate Dana Stevens

A vast, lumbering white elephant of a movie--but I sort of love it.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

At its best, the movie's crazy in unexpected and poetic ways; at its worst, merely preposterous.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

I'm all for bold screwiness, but this provocation seems labored despite the striking images.

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.

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.

The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett

Lacking coherence and suspense, the picture is likely to attract a cult following while disappointing Coppola's fan base.

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.

Empire Kim Newman

Not quite a complete write-off, but basically a folly.

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.

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.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Coppola never manages to get his themes to coalesce into anything terribly coherent.

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.

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.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The movie is one soporific, depressed, deadeningly vague scene after another.