Youth

We tend to think of the age­ing process as one of per­pet­u­al decline. The body grows weak, the mind tires, mem­o­ries fade. Accept­ing our own mor­tal­i­ty is one of the hard­est real­i­sa­tions we face as human beings, yet the real­i­ty is that only a few of us will reach the point where ​“nat­ur­al caus­es” – that most curi­ous and vague of med­ical euphemisms – becomes a viable cause of death. We fear what we can­not con­trol and believe the best we can hope for is a quick and pain­less exit. But what mat­ters more: the man­ner in which you go, or mak­ing sure you’re at peace with the world when your time is up?

In Youth, writer/​director Pao­lo Sorrentino’s oper­at­ic ode to old age, we’re remind­ed that regard­less of how many mile­stones some­one pass­es, respect can take a life­time to earn and a sec­ond to lose. Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine) may have some way to go before he can expect to receive a let­ter from the Queen, but here, on his annu­al retreat to the Swiss Alps, a dif­fer­ent kind of Roy­al mes­sage becomes the cat­a­lyst for a cathar­tic cleans­ing of the soul.

Ballinger is a British com­pos­er famed for his ​‘Sim­ple Songs’, which he is cor­dial­ly invit­ed – with great insis­tence from Her Majesty’s toad­y­ing emis­sary (Alex Mac­queen) – to con­duct at a birth­day con­cert for Prince Philip in Lon­don. He gra­cious­ly declines cit­ing ​“per­son­al rea­sons”, which seems like a con­ve­nient excuse from some­one whose fire has appar­ent­ly gone out. Lat­er, after being pressed by the emis­sary dur­ing a sec­ond fruit­less vis­it, a now vis­i­bly irri­tat­ed Ballinger offers a more sat­is­fac­to­ry expla­na­tion, the full weight of which isn’t felt until the clos­ing stages of this extra­or­di­nary, life-affirm­ing film.

This is Sorrentino’s sec­ond Eng­lish-lan­guage fea­ture after 2011’s This Must Be the Place, and while its mean­der­ing, idio­syn­crat­ic qual­i­ties osten­si­bly place it in the same stall as that David Byrne fan­boy fol­ly, Youth is an alto­geth­er more enrich­ing char­ac­ter study. A good deal of the plau­dits must go to Caine, who at 82 puts in one of the most dar­ing, dis­tin­guished per­for­mances of his career. That heart­felt con­fes­sion to the Queen’s hap­less mes­sen­ger aside, this is a role that requires emo­tion­al intel­li­gence with­out over­state­ment. Ballinger feels so lived-in that you begin to won­der whether Caine invest­ed any­thing of him­self in the part – at one point it’s revealed that Ballinger pre­vi­ous­ly refused a knight­hood; in real life Caine has pub­licly stat­ed that he is not fussed whether peo­ple refer to him as ​“Sir”.

Caine can still deliv­er a stir­ring mono­logue when he needs to, but there’s noth­ing here quite so osten­ta­tious as his ​‘some men just want to watch the world burn’ speech from The Dark Knight. (Christo­pher Nolan could learn a thing or two from the way Sor­renti­no struc­tures his script to play to the vet­er­an actor’s var­i­ous strengths.) Ballinger may have offi­cial­ly retired, but in truth he nev­er stopped con­duct­ing – whether he’s wip­ing his nose with a hand­ker­chief or rhyth­mi­cal­ly scrunch­ing a sweet wrap­per between his fin­gers. Instinc­tive ges­tures tell us more about his char­ac­ter than dia­logue ever could, and Caine mas­ters these man­ner­isms with all the craft and guile of a true maestro.

Sor­renti­no has a decent track record when it comes to work­ing with sea­soned leads, of course, hav­ing helped Toni Servil­lo find his sweet spot in 2013’s The Great Beau­ty. Like that La Dolce Vita-lite satir­ic dra­ma, Youth is a med­i­ta­tion on life, love and loss as told through the mourn­ful eyes of a some­what self­ish, some­what senile pro­tag­o­nist. Yet while the sense of unful­fill­ment afflict­ing Servillo’s elder­ly Roman socialite is born out of a gen­er­al yearn­ing for the past, the onset of Ballinger’s apa­thy is intrin­si­cal­ly linked to a ghost from his present. It’s telling that when the time to con­front it final­ly arrives, the over­whelm­ing feel­ing towards him is one of com­pas­sion. Here­in lies Sorrentino’s great­est trick: we’re always hap­py to be in Ballinger’s com­pa­ny with­out ever tru­ly car­ing about his strug­gles with grief and guilt. Until sud­den­ly we do, and it’s utter­ly heartbreaking.

Ballinger isn’t the only one putting up a front. The remote­ness and tran­quil­i­ty offered by this idyl­lic Alpine set­ting attracts an unusu­al array of celebri­ties. But while Paul Dano’s cred-hun­gry Hol­ly­wood actor, Jim­my Tree, an obese South Amer­i­can foot­ball icon and Miss Uni­verse are each either try­ing to escape the lime­light or else fig­ur­ing out how they can get more of it, the thing that Ballinger is search­ing for is less tan­gi­ble. For best friend Mick Boyle (Har­vey Kei­t­el), it’s not a case of what he’s hid­ing from but what he hopes to find. Mick is a renowned direc­tor who’s past his prime but doesn’t know it (or maybe he’s sim­ply in denial).

The script for his next and pos­si­bly final film – which he pre­ma­ture­ly refers to as his ​“tes­ta­ment” – is almost fin­ished but lacks an end­ing, so he and four bud­ding screen­writ­ers have booked into the lux­u­ry spa resort, will­ing inspi­ra­tion to strike. So far it’s proven frus­trat­ing­ly elu­sive. In one scene while out tak­ing in the spec­tac­u­lar moun­tain scenery, Mick uses a tourist tele­scope to illus­trate the dif­fer­ence between how close the future seems in youth com­pared to how dis­tant the past appears with age. Sorrentino’s use of sym­bol­ism ranges from absurd to inel­e­gant, but this crys­tallis­ing moment is per­haps the most elo­quent expres­sion of the film’s emo­tion­al power.

Then there’s Ballinger’s daugh­ter and per­son­al assis­tant, Lena (Rachel Weisz), who’s used to solv­ing oth­er people’s prob­lems but is plunged into a cri­sis of her own after being cru­el­ly dumped by her fiancé́e (who also hap­pens to be Mick’s son). When Lena’s father attempts to con­sole her by extend­ing an olive branch of empa­thy, she unleash­es a fero­cious exple­tive-rid­den tirade. He nev­er real­ly knew her moth­er, Lena claims, and thus can’t even begin to under­stand every­thing she’s going through now.

An even more cut­ting rejec­tion occurs late on when Mick is vis­it­ed by his for­mer muse, the noto­ri­ous diva Bren­da Morel (Jane Fon­da, dressed to the nines in a riotous­ly fun­ny cameo). He’s been try­ing to con­vince her to star in his film know­ing he won’t get fund­ing with­out her, but she’s not about to do an old friend any favours. Both women owe a debt to the men whose respec­tive genius con­tin­ues to cast a long shad­ow, yet cru­cial­ly the over­rid­ing theme is one of male inadequacy.

Caine and Keitel’s win­ning chem­istry occa­sion­al­ly threat­ens to turn Youth into The Fred and Mick Show, but Sor­renti­no always man­ages to find a way to under­pin their geri­atric ban­ter (bod­i­ly dys­func­tion is an espe­cial­ly pop­u­lar top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion) with some­thing more pro­found. With their flaws laid bare, the two men slow­ly come around to the idea that it’s nev­er too late to start mak­ing up for past mis­takes. This is a film that doesn’t claim to have all the answers to life’s biggest ques­tions but, as with all great works of art, one that leaves plen­ty open to inter­pre­ta­tion. And much like life itself, what you get out of it ulti­mate­ly depends on what you’re will­ing to bring to it.