Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here.

This one almost defies criticism. There is little doubt looking at it that Francis Ford Coppola has made precisely the film he set out to make. It’s every bit as technically dazzling and rich and forward-thinking as TUCKER or DRACULA were when he made those. I know it’s not particularly hip to like Coppola these days, but I am a fan of much of his career, and particularly his go-for-broke attitude that has caused him to implode several times, but which has also led to some truly spectacular highs over the course of his filmography.

Describing the story to the film is next to impossible. You could summarize all the events that take place in the movie, but that really wouldn’t convey the experience. This is almost pure cinema, Coppola working with his best collaborators to create this barrage of sound and image and emotion that certainly packs some sort of cumulative punch.

Mircea Eliade’s novella is definitely fully present in the film that Coppola made, and to some extent, the way Eliade plays with time and narrative and form verbally dictates the way Coppola tries to handle the same ideas visually. The film opens in Romania in 1938, where Dominic Matei (Tim Roth) has a terrible dream before setting out for Bucharest, where he plans to kill himself. Before he can, though, he is struck by lightning.

Keep in mind... Dominic is 70 years old, a man embittered by the many disappointments and sorrows of his life. He’s haunted by memories of Laura (Alexandra Maria Lara), his first love, and by the fact that he has never been able to find the time to complete his life-long study of the evolution of human language.

And when he is struck by lightning, he is fried to a crisp, enough voltage run through him to kill anyone. It’s a spectacular moment, and Coppola makes sure you aren’t confused about how traumatic an event it is. This is the lightning strike to end all lightning strikes.

And somehow, Dominic survives. More than that, though, he actually begins to age backwards. He begins to regenerate, and very quickly, he looks like a man half his age. He goes through a remarkable transformation as his teeth fall out of his head, pushed away as new teeth erupt. His case becomes a sensation as he works with a doctor (Bruno Ganz) to figure out what’s happened to him. Unfortunately, with war erupting around Europe, he draws the wrong kind of attention and finds himself on Adolf Hitler’s “to acquire” list. As strange as the film is up to this point, it’s the introduction of Dominic’s exact double as a sort of devil-on-his-shoulder that marks the moment where the film spins off into near-lunacy.

I think Coppola is obviously dealing with ideas of mortality and fate and thinking about some of the big questions, like what we are supposed to do with our time in this world, and what we leave behind as our legacy when we go. When Dominic gets a second chance of sorts with Laura, things begin to get really intense, and she becomes part of his research. Lara gives one hell of a dedicated performance, and although I haven’t seen her work in CONTROL, I’d say it’s safe to assume this is the year she really made her first big mark on cinema. This is assured, adult work, and in a way, this struck me as PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED by way of ALTERED STATES, a love story about someone pursuing someone else into their work that is dangerous on a fundamental personality level, determined to save them. I’m sort of a sucker for this kind of story. Last year’s THE FOUNTAIN also fits this loose template, and I’m sure you’ll read many comparisons between Coppola’s film and Aronofksy’s. I think the difference is clarity. Aronofsky’s movie last year was precise, with really only one thing on its mind. YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH is spilling over with ideas, and it’s sort of like a conversation with someone who can’t hold one train of thought. It’s a young man’s movie with an old master’s technique, which is sort of what Coppola seems to have set out to accomplish. On that level, he’s tapped back into the simple joys of filmmaking in a very direct way.

The film wears out its welcome long before it makes its final points, and I think Coppola could have had something really special if he’d been brutal with what he shot. This is not a case of more-is-more. I dearly love the excess of APOCALYPSE NOW, but this film feels like a short story stretched too thin. It makes its points early, then makes them repeatedly. By the time it finally reaches its climax, there are some sequences of real lyrical power, but they feel unconnected... great scenes that aren’t quite earned. When the last inevitable rose finally appears, the film this reminds me most of in Coppola’s filmography turns out to be RUMBLE FISH. I suspect I’ll revisit this one because I’ll want to look at how Walter Murch cut certain sequences, or I’ll want to see some aspect of Calin Papura’s production design again, or I’ll want to soak up a bit of Osvaldo Golijov’s sweeping score in context. Coppola’s collaborators all bring their very best work to the table, and the result is certainly a high-end piece of craftsmanship.

This may be as spectacular a miss as SOUTHLAND TALES, but to me, this is a playful, loose and limber mistake, a film that seems to have been made without calculation. There’s something so generous about how much Coppola has poured into the film that it seems ungracious to refuse to at least enjoy it once. You may well hate YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH when you see it, but I guarantee you won’t forget it.

Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles