Movie Review – Youth

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Spoiler alerts – 2015 Paolo Sorrentino’s wonderful movie is about octogenarians contemplating their uncertain futures during their annual holiday in a Swiss Spa Sanatorium. Michael Caine is a retired composer and orchestra conductor. The Queen wants him to perform his most famous work at a Royal Variety Show but he is refusing to do it. The piece was written for the voice of his wife, who is now a dementia patient in Venice. He has vowed that the piece will never again be performed in his lifetime. Harvey Keitel, his best friend, is a film director, still working even during the holiday. He has a team of young script-writers assisting him in creating a script with which to draw his long-time favourite actress, played by Jane Fonda out of her retirement. Other characters have their own hang-ups. Keitel’s leading actor resents being remembered for his role as a robot in an SF film, and Caine’s daughter and carer, played by Rachel Weisz, needs caring for herself when her lover dumps her for pop singer Paloma Faith (who plays herself in a very funny self-depreciating cameo). There are many surreal elements, a levitating monk, an overweight football legend, a Hitler impersonator who just can’t do evil well enough, and children able to talk in profound philosophical aphorisms. The real star however is David Lang’s specially composed classical score and the deeply haunting finale song A Simple Song, performed by acclaimed South Korean Soprano Sumi Jo which I have added here as a Youtube. It is used right at the end of the movie. Arthur Chappell