Francis Ford Coppola goes back to his roots as director
By Behind The Scenes TV on Nov 13, 2007 in Directors, Film Business, Filmmaking, Hollywood, Interview, New Movies
“I had an impressive career as a younger person,” says Francis Ford Coppola, “but it was like an older director’s.” Perhaps that’s why people have been wondering if he’d gone into early retirement. The director of such indelible movies as The Godfather and Apocalypse Now hasn’t put out a film in 10 years and has been, by his own admission, in a creative slump for 25. So now he’s changing tactics: since he couldn’t scramble out of the ditch going forward, he’s trying reverse. For his next film, the aptly titled Youth Without Youth, Coppola, 68, returned to a stage of his career he feels ended prematurely: the beginning. “At 29 I was making an older man’s picture [Finian's Rainbow],” he says. “The younger director never had his moment. Now I’m making a younger man’s picture.”
Youth Without Youth might also be described as a wistful man’s picture. An adaptation by Coppola of a novella by the Romanian-born philosopher Mircea Eliade, the unashamedly arty film stars Tim Roth as Dominic Matei, an aging linguistics professor whose youth is restored after he survives a lightning strike. Because of his rejuvenation, Matei is able to work on his unfinished magnum opus and pursue a lost love. With a dense, multilayered plot spanning multiple continents, decades and languages, and heady themes like consciousness and the nature of time, Youth seems a lot more than a decade removed from Coppola’s last film, the decidedly commercial Matt Damon courtroom drama The Rainmaker.
(Source: Time)
Related posts:
- Francis Ford Coppola makes movie on his own terms In “The Liberation of Francis Ford Coppola” (December), Bruce...
- Francis Ford Coppola Untangles “Tetro” It was telling that a roundtable interview with Francis...
- Director Francis Ford Coppola introduces his new film “Tetro” SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Francis Ford Coppola goes back to his...