Youth

WARNING: This review is hidden because it reveals the content of the film.
Click here to show this review. Another "great beauty" from Paolo Sorrentino, Oscar winning director of The Great Beauty. Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel portray (convincingly) life-long friends musing and contemplating about the past while sojourning at an upscale Swiss spa filled with various and diverse members of the "top 1%" including a successful actor (Paul Dano) preparing for his next role, a morbidly obese, former star soccer player and an extremely beautiful "Miss Universe" (naturally.) The nontraditional story line includes fragments of the amazing spa, various dream sequences (Caine's character dreams of meeting the tall, busty Miss universe on a platform over the canals of Venice) and little vignettes involving the secondary characters. The conversations are replete with wit and truisms-Caine comments about old age by stating:"I don't know how I got here." There is a neat daydream scene wherein famous maestro Caine conducts a symphony in a meadow using cows, cowbells and birds. The movie is chock-full of visual splendors and witty humor. When Caine and Keitel are sitting in a pool, a nude Miss Universe enters the pond. One pal asks the other ;"Who is that? " The reply: "God." This filmic meditation on life, old-age and memory is best summed up by Caine."If you remove only one person, it changes the world." The cinematography is exquisite as is the beautiful soundtrack. Since this rich, rewarding film was snubbed by the Academy, I'm inclined to say that it is too good for the Oscars.