In a word, Youth
is probably best described as frustrating.
It is by no means a bad film, but it is a rather obtuse one, a film that
requires you to acclimate to director Paolo Sorrentino’s seemingly bizarre
sensibilities, and even then it will likely lose a lot of its audience to its
pretentions. However, there are really
extraordinary pieces to this puzzle, even if those pieces don’t fit together in
a conventional sense or even one that I would particularly prefer. It’s best to go into this one knowing what to
expect, though.
Set in a Swiss resort, the film follows the day-to-day lives
of retired composer Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine) and working director Mick
Boyle (Harvey Keitel), best friends for the past sixty years. Those looking for a clean narrative
throughline to this film should look elsewhere, as the film purposely avoids
doing so, only coming close in the opening and closing moments as Fred wrestles
with a decision to return to conducting at behest of Queen Elizabeth. Rather, this film operates in themes and
motifs, often returning to repeated phrases or visual callbacks in order to
create moments of symmetry and contrast, particularly in how Fred and Mick
approach their pasts and futures in old age.
Caine gives one of the most nuanced performances of his late
career and Keitel is similarly engaging, particularly in later scenes where we
see what fruits his character's current cinematic labor will reap. The supporting cast is also noteworthy, from
Paul Dano as a jaded young actor who wants to be remembered for more than his
most popular role in a sci-fi film, to Rachel Weisz as Fred’s daughter trying
to recover after her husband dumps her to marry a pop star. All of these characters have a great
chemistry with one another that not only makes for great drama, but a surprising
amount of comedy that left me laughing much harder than I would have thought from
a film about old men pondering their near demises.
The real star, though, is the cinematographer, Luca Bigazzi,
who composes shot after gorgeous shot that seem to belong more in an art book
than they do in a motion picture. And I
don’t say that solely to compliment Bigazzi’s work; these shots belong moreso
in an art book than in this film. The
editing is erratic, absurd at the best of moments but completely baffling at
the worst. As gorgeous as this film is
at times, those moments only serve to pull us away from the characters, the
only thing this film has going for it in any semblance of a narrative. Particularly when the film veers into more
serious territory in its later scenes, these moments become tedious,
distracting from the character drama that is supposed to be engaging us.
As I said before, Youth
is a frustrating film, but not one without merit. Sorrentino seems to want to play with the
medium of film in purposely musical ways, playing more to emotional spectacle
through repetition and variation than to conventional three-act structure. And that’s fine, but I don’t think the
experiment is an entirely successful one, particularly when it tries to pull
back on the reigns and ground its narrative in its two leads. But without that grounding, the film could
have veered into true avant garde territory, and who knows what would have
resulted. As is, Youth is entirely watchable and not entirely pointless, and your
entertainment will likely be dependent on keeping that in mind.
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