Butler's Cinema Scene

“YOUTH”  My rating: A- 

124 minutes | MPAA rating: R

I had to watch “Youth” a second time to really appreciate it.

Glad I did.

As with his previous film, “The Great Beauty,” which was inspired by Fellini’s “La Dolce Vida,” the latest from filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino is inspired by (and often directly copies) Fellini’s “8 1/2.” My mistake the first time around was to see it first and foremost as an homage rather than a free-standing effort that playfully samples a great film from the past.

And then there’s the fact that this is about as subtle a movie as we’re going to encounter this holiday season — minimal plotting, zero action, maximum atmosphere. Do not see “Youth” if you’re tired or short-tempered or preoccupied.

Unfolding almost entirely at a posh hotel and spa in the Swiss Alps, the film centers on two old friends rapidly approaching 80.

As the film begins composer/conductor Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine) is being approached by an agent of Queen Elizabeth, who for Prince Philip’s birthday wants Ballinger to conduct a performance of his seminal work “Simple Songs.” Ballinger turns down the offer and the accompanying knighthood, telling the oily emissary that he is retired. Period.

In the same hotel veteran filmmaker Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel) is working with five young writers to complete the script of his next — and penultimate — film.

Fred and Mick find plenty of time to hang out together. Not only is Fred’s daughter Lena (Rachel Weisz) married to Nick’s son, but the two men have been friends for 60 years.  They used to compete for the same women; now they battle over who has the most uncooperative prostate and shakiest memory.

There are other celebs to rub elbows with, like the current Miss Universe (who shocks and delights the two old cronies by swimming nude) and an American movie actor  (Paul Dano) who quietly seethes because his fame rests almost entirely on a cheesy sci-fi flick in which he played a robot. (To stir things up he attends dinner made up and costumed as Adolf Hitler.)

Fred and Mick also amuse themselves studying on other guests, like the obese South American who was once the world’s best soccer player, a Tibetan llama who reputedly has powers of levitation, a small boy learning the violin by playing Fred’s “Simple Songs,” and a young girl who is vastly more advanced than her hovering and provincial mom.

The film even opens its arms to embrace the staff of the hotel, especially a nearly-mute young masseuse with a mouthful of orthodontics — she communicates with her fingers, not her tongue — and a bearded mountaineer who shows up at just in time to catch Lena when her marriage collapses.

Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel

The plot, to the extent which it exists, contrasts Fred’s life with Mick’s.  Fred describes himself as apathetic.  After a lifetime in which his career and various dalliances took precedence over his wife and family, he now finds himself quietly regretting his choices. Rather than facing these issues, he prefers to withdraw from everything.

Nick, on the other hand, is a gregarious go-getter who is always planning his next movie.

You could say that “Youth” is about how these two old fellows exchange places.

Of course, you can wallow in the glories of “Youth” without even considering a plot.  Like “The Great Beauty,” it is a visual tour de force, photographed with an eye for the odd composition. During the day the guests, swathed in robes like pilgrims at a shrine, drift from one body-cleansing experience to another. And each evening the hotel offers  an entertainment — everything from a rock band to a fire-breather or a woman who choreographs gigantic bubbles. These odd diversions unfold on a rotating circulating stage on one of the lawns. They’re magical.

Jane Fonda

So are some of the dream sequences.  Fred has a nightmare about being in a cathedral in Venice that is rapidly filling with water. Mick imagines that a mountain hillside is covered with the actresses who have been in his movies, in full makeup and appropriate costuming.  And in a tour de force sequence, Fred sits on a tree stump and conducts a symphony from nature: Mooing cattle, gently clanging cowbells, birdcalls, buzzing insects and the creak of pines in the wind seem to respond to his waving hands.

Late in the film Jane Fonda shows up as the actress who has starred in most of Mick’s great hits.  She’s there to tell him she won’t be doing his movie and delivers a shitload of profane tough love about how his last few films have been embarrassments and that it’s time for him to quit while he’s ahead. In a movie that is all about subtlety, Fonda delivers a bracing kick in the crotch. It’s got Oscar nom written all over it.

“Youth” is a passionate film masquerading as a rest cure. It all seems mildly interesting and peaceful, and then it comes up and gob smacks us with its emotional power.

The message? Well, perhaps it has something to do with not taking ourselves too seriously, not making the mistake of thinking we’re at the center of things.

As Mick tells his screenwriters: “Men, artists, animals, plants –we’re all just extras.”

| Robert W. Butler