MOVIE REVIEW: ‘Youth’ looks at the elderly with artistic vigor of the young

“Youth” is about anything but being young. Its grizzled hero of sorts is 80-something British composer and conductor Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine), who has long since left the queen’s realm behind for retirement at a health resort in the Swiss Alps populated by silent types who seem to do little more than bathe and consort in the nude.

Fred’s day-to-day routine is occupied with long walks and talks with his friend of decades, Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel), an American who ran in the same artistic circles as Fred and is now holed up in the resort with a cadre of Yankee screenwriters trying to craft the perfect script for Mick’s effort at a cinematic swan song. It must be absolutely perfect, you see, hence his employing a team of scribes to fashion pieces he will likely later pass off as his own.

The ostensible odd-couple natures of Mr. Keitel and Mr. Caine’s personas and acting styles lends a certain chemistry to the relationship between Fred and Mick that seems as real as any two friends whom life has thrust together despite vast differences of experience and temperament. Their being respectively English and American is a stroke of fortune for the piece, and the two men turn up aces in their scenes together — mostly entailing walking and talking or sitting and talking. I’m willing to wager the two old pros had fun on the set together.

To say a film about the elderly is about mortality is about as prescriptivist as saying a film with teenagers is about the folly of being young and inexperienced. And so it is that “Youth” has far more up its sleeve than merely the angst of people nearing the end of life in temporal reflections and attempts at reconciliation with their sins. While Bergman in temperament director Paolo Sorrentino is not, the Swedish master’s flights of fantastical fancy bear their fingerprint on “Youth”’s dream sequences, with illogical events somewhat borrowed from the aesthetic of “Wild Strawberries,” Bergman’s 1957 film in which the aging professor recapitulates his hopes and his mistakes in surreal semi-reality.

Two events force Fred out of his general English malaise early in “Youth.” One is emissaries of Her Majesty inquiring if the retired maestro would be so gracious as to perform his greatest masterpiece for the Crown in London, an entreaty Fred outright refuses for reasons he demurs at sharing — and the ultimate payoff for which is somewhat hollow.

The other is the sudden news that Fred’s daughter Lena’s (Rachel Weisz) husband has up and traded her in for a newer model. Inconveniently for Lena, but of incredible convenience for the plot, Lena’s philandering husband is the son of the filmmaker Mick, allowing for scenes where Mr. Keitel, seemingly unsurprised, takes Lena’s side and calls his own son all manner of foul terms. It is meant to be funny, I suppose, and perhaps hints at deeper levels of enmity between Mick and his middle-aged son, but the dynamic somehow misses the mark. Our sympathies are never far from Lena as Miss Weisz ever faithfully fashions yet again a character of depth from script pages, and helping her with a cheerleader seems unnecessary.

If Mr. Caine is the film’s avatar, Miss Weisz is its anchor. In a crucial moment she delivers a resentment-filled monologue at Fred for his years of philandering and making her mother’s life hell — all while encased in mud during a spa treatment. Miss Weisz’s eyes burn with the fire of the soul in her minutes-long, single-take diatribe against her father, all but assuring her an Oscar nod.

Such is all you need know of the plot. Speaking of “Youth” further I need only touch upon its stylistic flourishes — which are many — and its attempts to squeeze portent and meaning and emotion from every frame. Some of it works, but in the last third the emotional gas tank runs low. The film could rightfully have ended 30 minutes sooner than it does thanks to a magical moment involving a Buddhist monk (Dorji Wangchuk), but Mr. Sorrentino, who also wrote the screenplay, seems insistent upon underlining and boldfacing the humanity and frailty of his characters rather than trusting his audience to get it on their own.

I was with the film until the aforementioned scene with the monk — an emotional high — then led to far too many scenes of forced melodrama attempting to tie up all loose threads, including what is meant to be the film’s actual climax: a one-on-one scene between Mick and an equally aging actress he is wooing for his new film. The Hollywood legend (whom I will not reveal) cast as far-from-her-prime starlet Brenda Morel brings enough portent to the scene in and of itself with her presence alone that it all but screams, “Now, here, is the truly important scene.”

Fortunately, Mr. Keitel and his co-star in the scene make the best of dialogue that is so weighted with obviousness as to be distracting. It’s as if Mr. Sorrentino is telling his characters, hurry up, life’s end doth approacheth, out with all the things you could never say before.

Paul Dano also resides at the resort as an American actor who fears his own success might doom him from … further success, he says. In one truly unfunny, incomprehensible scene, Mr. Dano’s character, Jimmy Tree, decides to go all-out thespian by dressing up as someone infamous from history — in rather poor forethought. The scene is a head-scratcher, and ultimately a throwaway that adds nothing but detracts with its own tastelessness.

“Youth” is ultimately saved thanks to yet another stellar performance from Mr. Caine as Fred in his mutedly British laconic state, but Miss Weisz steals the show in every frame she fills. It’s been some time since Mr. Keitel was given an acting job this juicy, and he makes the most of it, calling to mind his tortured ’70s performances for Scorsese before he became a pop culture darling thanks to the ’90s Tarantino films.

The advantages of “Youth,” including stunning lenswork of the Swiss mountainscapes by Luca Bigazzi, ultimately outweigh its drawbacks, but if Mr. Sorrentino had simply gotten out of his own way, done a little less aping of Bergman and perhaps done away with some of the overt scene-writing, he could well have been on his way to one of the year’s best.

And no points for guessing whether or not Fred ever performs that symphony for the queen. But bonus points if you do figure out what that monk is up to.

Rated R: Contains wordless Europeans prancing about in the buff as if nudity were a natural state, some sexuality (involving old people, no less) and foul language.