RECOMMENDED A lot of Coppola Rubicon has gone down the river to make “Youth Without Youth,” a dense, personal, obstinate, thoughtful, gleamingly crafted adaptation of a novella by Romanian-born writer Mircea Eliade. I would not call it bad, but I would not call it easy: there are layers and layers that resist ready interpretation, but there are myriad pleasures in all its surfaces. In the 1930s, Tim Roth plays a 70-year-old professor who, struck by lightning, becomes progressively younger. Static, stately shots are the style here, and they’re beautiful. The storytelling… I enjoyed but don’t think I got at all. This is the sort of magical realism that will become widely known only by some sort of unlikely magic or fortune. I like “The Outsiders” and “Rumble Fish” a lot, but it’s nice that Coppola is spending his millions rustling around in other forms of adaptation. The next five or ten movies that the 68-year-old Coppola is going to make are going to be pretty goddamn awesome. With Bruno Ganz, Alexandra Maria Lara, Alexandra Pirici. 124m. Anamorphic widescreen. (Ray Pride)
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