MFF 2015 REVIEW: Youth is Wasted on the Young, Old and Anyone In-Between

 

 

MFF 2015 REVIEW: Youth is Wasted on the Young, Old and Anyone In-Between

By Tom Fuchs

Image courtesy of Fox Searchlight

There’s the famous “three good scenes, no bad ones” edict Howard Hawks delivered when describing what makes for a good movie, and I am willing to say that Paolo Sorrentino has the “three good” aspect of that aphorism down pat.  Now he just has to work on making a movie that isn’t otherwise littered with bad ones.  Youth is a ponderous chore of a movie, proving that while Sorrentino is a director capable of capturing great beauty, he lacks the will or self-editing to harness that visual acumen into something more engaging or substantial.

 

As in his Oscar-winning picture, the plot of Youth revolves around apathetic men in the twilight of their lives on the search for meaning in a visually idyllic landscape, although this time we’re ensconced in a luxurious Alpine resort with a largely elderly clientele who spend their time getting massages and lounging poolside.  Sorrentino aims to get mileage out of shots of these sept- and octo-genarians being herded along their pathways like cattle, but it feels more mean-spirited than comedic or surreal.  Our two leads are the retired maestro Fred (Michael Caine) and the famed director Mick (Harvey Keitel) who is working with a platoon of millennial types on the screenplay for his “cinematic last will and testament”.  Also staying at the hotel is Fred’s daughter/personal assistant Lena (Rachel Weisz, luminous but given very little to do) and the famed American actor Jimmy Tree (Paul Dano, the most solid performance overall) who is preparing for a major role in a European picture, and these stories weave in and out of one another as they spend their time enjoying the scenic vistas and endless amenities (including a rotating bandstand for nighttime performances that appears to serve little other purpose than causing nausea for its performers) offered to them while waxing poetic on their careers and art.

 

There are moments of grace to be had amidst the death march of faux-profundity, to be sure: an early sequence where the retired composer sits on a tree stump and conducts nature’s symphony (clanging cow bells, rustling leaves and the like) is a winner, but for every moment of grace or visual wit there’s a half-dozen tone deaf clunkers to match it.  A scene where Keitel’s director is confronted by a legion of his past female leads is supposed to be emotionally overwhelming but instead feels unearned and nothing more than a stylistic flourish.  And don’t get me started on the big scene between Keitel and his long-time muse as portrayed by Jane Fonda – the film stops dead in its tracks for this sequence and it amounts to little more than sub-Birdman observations about television and film that leaves two immensely talented performers faffing about in a sequence that I found genuinely embarrassing.  We come to closest to a level of personal understanding with Caine’s Fred, but even he reaches an emotional catharsis we weren’t brought along for by film’s end, leaving us on the outside looking in.

 

And that’s Youth’s biggest failing: in attempting to cast a wide net and chart the emotional journeys of its sprawling cast we instead feel no connection to the interior lives of anyone involved, leaving the cavalcade of emotional epiphanies the film purports to deliver in its back end as shallow as the wading pools the extras are performing water aerobics in. There’s little doubt Sorrentino is capable of crafting sumptuous imagery, it just appears he lacks the impetus to make an audience care about any of it. The end result feels like Fellini as car commercial, exquisite imagery without a hint of personal investment.