Great visual and auditory experience with interesting and novel fusion of Continental and Anglosphere film-making

Rating: 8/10 (26 September 2015)

As I indicate in the summary title, this is on the one hand a profoundly "Continental"-style film, even up to the Swiss mountain setting; and so it is full of intriguing and at times gorgeous visual impression, enigmatic happenings that pass over into the surreal from time to time, and such an overwhelming desire to be "meaningful" that it may readily be accused of straying into over-analysis. Great Polish Director Krzysztof Kieslowski - who also came close to the above threshold, but somehow still stayed successfully below it - once noted that film was not an especially useful medium for telling stories, illustrating this by asking how many minutes (hours?) of film you would need to convey one line from a book: "he gradually came to see her less and less often, and eventually stopped seeing her altogether". In similar vein, a sparser way of dealing with issues raised in the film "Youth" could theoretically be reduced to a single, 8-verse Louis Daniel Brodsky poem, or even simply to its ever-memorable title "If Youth Knew and Age Could" (admittedly said originally by a 16th-century Frenchman, and also later by Sigmund Freud). However, ... and this a big "However", the cast and acting of this film give it a British feel, or at least a trans-Atlantic one given the partnership of the film's key senior citizens, Brit Sir Michael Caine and Yank Harvey Keitel. While the latter actor has always been a firm favourite of this reviewer, the former has seemed a bit of an acquired taste. But with this film the acquisition process is complete. For me this would be Sir Michael's greatest ever performance, even if it is - in essence - just more of Michael Caine, albeit now Michael Caine as senior statesman of the film world, here beautifully devoid of any hint of that old, class-related "chip on the shoulder". Here he finds a niche, and his straightforward understatement conveys ideally the version of growing old that says "I've kinda had enough really, given what life has thrown at me, but I'm accepting because there's absolutely nothing I can - or even want to - do about it". This contrasts ideally with the more driven and up-beat Keitel as Caine's best friend and regular holiday companion. Indeed, the pair are "almost related" given that the daughter of Caine's character (an effective Rachel Weisz) has married the son of Keitel's, giving the film one of its several intriguing-enough plot devices. Both of these key male characters are artists - Caine a famous and sophisticated conductor and musician, and Keitel a prolific and sassy film-maker. Both are in essence past it, though the Caine character has no doubt about that, while the Keitel character has difficulties with the concept. As the film progresses, the two deal with these circumstances in quite contrasting ways (I'll write no more on that). On the way, there are numerous interesting and touching (and occasionally hotly erotic, farcical or shocking) juxtapositions of youth being able to but not yet knowing, and old age knowing but (largely if not wholly) not being able to - in the sublimely beautiful, yet above all staid and ordered and "safe", setting of a posh if oldie-worldie Swiss hotel for the very well-heeled. Overall, this film verges on the pretentious, and certainly would pass the boundary were it not for the Brits and Americans to drag it back down to Earth. But this makes for a rather new approach that in my view works quite nicely. The two key actors move us without even trying too hard, simply because they are now old men, let's face it. But the pairing is an extremely effective and convincing and joyous one. However, those choosing to see this film might wish to have at least hinted to them that a very great deal of the success here depends on its very last, closing scene - a profound and extremely powerful contrast with the rest of the film, if also a natural consequence of it, and one that will prove truly breathtaking for at least some of those who watch it - a real treat in store for the patient...