After ten years away from directing movies, director Francis Ford Coppola is back with a completely different kind of film and a radical new approach to filmmaking. Shot on a shoestring budget in Romania, Youth Without Youth, adapted from a novella by Romanian religious historian Mircea Eliade, wraps a serious exploration of time and consciousness in the exotic trappings of an international thriller and love story.

And while anyone looking for a Romanian Godfather (“Leave the gun, take the gogoşi.”) might be disappointed, true fans will thrill to the customary Coppola visual opera — quotidian scenes lifted to the sublime through framing and lighting; high-level acting, especially from Tim Roth as Dominic Matei, an aging professor of linguistics rejuvenated by a lightning strike; and virtuosic direction of complex shots and sequences — all exquisitely integrated with orchestration and sound.

Tim Roth and Director Francis Ford Coppola.
Photo by Cos Aelenei. © 2006 American Zoetrope INC, courtesy Sony Pictures Classics. All Rights Reserved.

After decades of work-for-hire directorial efforts for studios to pay off debt accumulated from the demise of his ambitious Zoetrope studios, Coppola has found a way to make a film in his own style and of his choosing. He was introduced to the works of Eliade by his childhood friend Wendy Doniger, a religious studies professor at the University of Chicago. After his long-planned film project Megalopolis, about a new utopia in a near-future New York, was undermined by the real world events of 9/11, Coppola shifted his interest to Eliade’s novella. Says Coppola: “I suddenly thought: ‘I can make this into a movie. I won’t tell anyone. I’ll just start doing it.’”

Coppola admits that like the lead character Dominic, he was stumped by his inability to complete his next important work. “At 66, I was frustrated,” he says. “I hadn’t made a film in eight years. My businesses were thriving, but my creative life was unfulfilled.”

Indie M.O.

With his project set, Coppola decided as well on a return to self-funded, low-budget, personal filmmaking, the kinds of efforts he made briefly before the runaway success of The Godfather changed the course of his career. He scouted locations in Romania, hired a largely Romanian cast and crew, including the young cinematographer Mihai Malaimare, Jr., and had his technical crew outfit a special Dodge Sprinter van with two Sony 900S digital cameras, lenses, and other necessary equipment sufficient to create a complete studio-on-wheels.

Shooting began in October 2005 and lasted 85 days. “I’ve always felt that if you’re working on a film whose themes interest you, the sheer act of making it ensures that you learn,” says Coppola. “When I read the story, I knew that if I made the movie I’d learn how to express time and dream cinematically. Making a movie is like asking a question, and when you finish, the movie itself is the answer.”

Ex Post Facto

To help him shape as clean an answer as possible, Coppola turned to longtime collaborator and three-time Oscar winner Walter Murch for film editing and sound mixing. “I always ask him,” says Coppola. “Walter’s unique talent is that he really is a fully dimensional filmmaker — a writer, director, and very creative person who sees opportunities to tell the story in a better way — a more efficient way or a more unusual way.”