Youth (2015) [Blu-ray]
Comedy | Drama | Music | Romance

Academy Award Winner Michael Caine joins Oscar Nominee Harvey Keitel in this beautiful, engaging film from Paolo Sorrentino. When two longtime friends -renowned conductor Fred Ballinger (Caine) and acclaimed filmmaker Mick Boyle (Keitel) - vacation at a serene Swiss Alps resort, their serenity is cut short by family crises and sudden demands. Ultimately the men realize that sometimes our most important experiences come later in this lush film about life, love, death and art, also starring Oscar Winners Rachel Weisz and Jane Fonda. Step behind the scenes with extras featuring the cast and director - on Blu-ray!

Storyline: Fred and Mick, two old friends, are on vacation in an elegant hotel at the foot of the Alps. Fred, a composer and conductor, is now retired. Mick, a film director, is still working. They look with curiosity and tenderness on their children's confused lives, Mick's enthusiastic young writers, and the other hotel guests. While Mick scrambles to finish the screenplay for what he imagines will be his last important film, Fred has no intention of resuming his musical career. But someone wants at all costs to hear him conduct again. Written by Anonymous Love Revolver

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, March 7, 2016 It's probably no big secret for regular readers of my reviews that I'm not overly impressed with a lot of songs that have received Academy Award nominations over the past few (several?) years, as evidenced by my citing in my The Happy Ending Blu-ray review that I felt the nominations for Best Song reached an apex they've never revisited in 1969 (and, yes, that does date me). But something that probably frustrates if not angers me just as much as the nominations themselves is the disrespect the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has routinely shown its nominees in this category over the past few years. As I also mentioned in my Rio 2 Blu-ray review, while fans of various musicians and/or songwriters may feel their favorites were "robbed" in any particular year (as I did vis a vis Sergio Mendes' nomination for Rio, and as many others evidently did this year with regard to Lady Gaga), there's been a curiously haphazard quality to not just nominations but to how the Academy chooses to feature nominated songs on the actual awards broadcast. In the case of Mendes and Rio, rather incredibly there were only two nominations for Best Song that year, and neither was featured on the Academy Awards broadcast. Something at least a bit similar happened with regard to the broadcast that just recently aired, when only three of the five nominees were deemed "worthy" to be part of the awards festivities. What's up with that? Where's the Music Branch of the Academy, or maybe even the American Federation of Musicians, when you really need them? Of course the Academy can do whatever it wants to, but card carrying members of the Film Score Geek Society (as I proudly am) may want to think about becoming more vocal (no pun intended) about this issue if it continues, especially when the omitted nominees are as captivating as Youth's (sole) Academy Award nominated Simple Song #3, an operatically tinged piece which may have struck some on the broadcast team as too high falutin' for the target demographic of the show to "get". (And, yes, there were "snippets" of all five nominees offered as the actual award was announced, but you didn't see Sumi Joy, Simple Song #3's acclaimed vocalist, up there on stage belting out the complete song the same way you did Lady Gaga or eventual winner Sam Smith.)

The lack of "real" airtime for Simple Song #3 is perhaps even more of a bane to curmudgeonly musicians (ahem) than might typically be the case since Youth actually revolves in part around an aging composer named Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine). The film takes place at a tony resort which is curiously reminiscent of the "spa" that another artist named Guido Anselmi visited in a little film called 8½, and in fact there's a certain Felliniesque quality to Youth wherein fantasy and reality intersect in some quasi-hallucinatory dream sequences. Also linking Youth to the iconic Fellini masterpiece is the fact that there's an actual filmmaker at the resort, Fred's longtime friend Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel), a guy who, like Guido himself, is attempting to finish a film (or at least a screenplay) despite some pressing psychological turmoil.

Fred and Mick turn out to be in-laws when it's revealed that Fred's daughter Lena (Rachel Weisz) is married to Mick's son Julian (Ed Stoppard), though the marriage is definitely on the rocks. Perhaps surprisingly that fact doesn't really impact the well established dance between the two elderly men, both of whom are too wrapped up in their own issues to really pay attention to what's happening with their kids. For Mick, that includes reconciling his filmography (and its reputation) with this proposed new piece he's working on, while for Fred it's a conundrum sparked by an offer from a toady of the Queen herself for Fred to conduct his most famous piece at a fête for Prince Philip which would also coincide with Fred being knighted. Fred is kind of unexpectedly resistant to the idea despite the honor being bestowed, a negative reaction which provides at least a hint of suspense in what is a rather static dramatic presentation at times.

Part of Fred's almost oddly dismissive attitude seems to be a correlative to some angst felt by a younger visitor to the resort, an actor named Jimmy Tree (Paul Dano). Jimmy laments to Fred that despite having worked with the cream of the crop of both American and European directors, and evidently having a long and variegated body of work (despite his age), he's best known for having played a robot in some box office blockbuster which has forever defined his career. Fred seems to share in the annoyance that one piece can pigeonhole an artist for all time, and for Fred it's his composition Simple Songs, which is in fact the work the Queen wants Fred to come back to London to conduct at her gala.

Youth is extremely strong on mood and probably even more so on style, but it struggles at times to really develop any real dramatic momentum. Though the reason behind Fred's reticence to perform Simple Songs is eventually detailed, getting there is a bit of a slog, albeit an incredibly scenic one courtesy of some stunning Swiss Alps scenery. The film works best as a series of vignettes (rather like 8 ½, actually), detailing a number of issues facing those whose best days may be behind them. Director Paolo Sorrentino seems to be hinting at profundities that may in fact never arrive, but he creates a really memorable "presence" with the resort setting, where a number of patently odd people (including some supposed real life personages) waft through, either in "reality" or fantasy. Performances are uniformly superb, especially Caine who reveals a rather fragile demeanor here which plays against type, at least somewhat. Keitel is typically brittle, Dano appealingly charming if under utilized, and Jane Fonda arrives late in the film for a glorified cameo as a pampered film star.

There's a somewhat similar quasi-magical realism at play here that was also in evidence in Birdman, and my hunch is Youth will engender the same bifurcated responses that the Alejandro González Iñárritu film did. Those coming to Youth expecting an all star extravaganza of some sort will probably be confounded by the film's meditative qualities, not to mention the patently odd fantasy elements. Those with an appreciation for Fellini may have an "in" here, since it seems probable to me that Sorrentino was meditating himself on 8 ½ when he made Youth. Technical merits are first rate, and Youth comes Recommended.

[CSW] -3.3- This film had an abundance of really poignant philosophical points but I am afraid that most if not all of them were either missed or ignored by most audiences. Very few people go to the movies with the intension of having to think philosophically. They don't mind mysteries where they get to think logically, but thinking about the philosophical implication is not the same thing. I hadn't expected to get caught up in that type of thinking but I was slowly and pleasantly surprised and eventually intrigued by much of the film. That is not to say that it made for a great film but it was certainly more than just pleasant relaxing Alpine scenery as some might think. This film is more like a walk in a good art gallery or watching a certain type of ballet. The beauty is there but there is also a certain depth to it too.
[V4.5-A4.5] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box


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