Disappointment

Rating: 2/10 (21 October 2015)

Youth is the sort of film we are supposed to like: esteemed Italian director and Academy Award winner, venerable actors, weighty subject matter. Yet, in the end it is one big disappointment. Here is why, and beware the spoilers.
1. The female characters are portrayed as weak, infantile or voiceless. Rachel Weisz has, by her own account, two jobs: daughter and assistant to her father the famous composer (which make it one job). Unable to pursue her own life, she is also afraid of heights. Although she confronts her father about his failings, we last see her being held like a baby by the bland mountaineer while hanging from the side of a mountain. Jane Fonda, in a brief cameo, berates Harvey Keitel while claiming she made her own career. Yet she is reduced to a raving mess on an airplane after learning of his suicide. The quiet masseuse, when asked why she never speaks, replies that she has nothing to say. Caine's wife is portrayed in just one scene, and she is reduced to nothing more than a catatonic silent scream.
2. Auxiliary characters such as the violin boy and the girl in the store do not emerge organically from the story. Rather they seem to be dropped into the story to mouth the thoughts of the writer/director, who apparently wants to make sure that the audience doesn't miss his intent.
3. The film is over filled with one surrealistic trope after another to the point of bursting.
4. Michael Caine's character is wrought over the realization late in life that devoting his time to his art/work came at the expense of relationships with people who mattered, namely his wife and daughter. Harvey Keitel, seeking to find a continued purpose in life by writing a new screenplay, kills himself upon realizing he can't do it. This is the stuff of a college sophomore who has taken a course in existential philosophy and became fascinated by The Stranger. There is a surface level philosophical question, but not much depth to it.
5. I could go on about the portrayal of emotionally empty sex, dining rooms filled with mute couples and mannequin like guests, people marching like automatons to the spa and so forth, all of which leave the viewer with a dismal view of life.
I give credit to Caine, Keitel and Weisz for doing the best they could with marginal material. The film itself, however, is pretty to look at and dismal to watch.