Review of Youth Without Youth (2007) by Walter M — 16 Jan 2009

[font=Century Gothic]"Youth without Youth" starts in 1938 when Dominic Matei(Tim Roth), a seventy-year old linguistics expert, gets struck by lightning crossing the street in front of a train station in Bucharest. Somehow he survives. What is truly amazing is that as his wounds heal, he finds himself getting younger, even growing new teeth. Along with his newfound youth, he finds that he has new abilities which are accompanied by an emerging alter ego. All of which makes Dominic afraid of what the Nazis would do to him, so he asks his doctor(Bruno Ganz) for false identification.[/font].

[font=Century Gothic][/font].

[font=Century Gothic]Written, directed and produced by Francis Ford Coppola, "Youth without Youth" is about mortality as viewed through the eyes of a man who has been frustrated by his inability to discover the origin of language and complete his life's work. At the same time, this scientist is confronted by clear signs of the supernatural. Original and as full of ideas as the movie is, it is ironic that the movie is as frustrating as Dominic's quest for knowledge. Perhaps it is the combination of superheroes and the intellectual but there is nothing to say that these two are mutually exclusive.[/font].