Youth (2015)
When you put Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel in the same frame, something almost alchemical happens. You don't even need to build much of a story around them. Just point the camera, get out of the way, and let two absolute powerhouses do what they've spent decades perfecting. Paolo Sorrentino understood that, and Youth is the proof. What he's made here is a film of quiet, devastating grace, the kind that creeps up on you slowly and then refuses to leave.
The setup alone is enough to get you through the door. Caine and Keitel play old friends, a composer and a film director, spending time at a luxury Alpine retreat. That's your canvas. Sorrentino then adds Rachel Weisz, warm and wounded in equal measure, and Paul Dano, an actor I'm a massive fan of, who brings this wonderfully twitchy, vulnerable energy to his role as a younger artist wrestling with his own sense of identity. Before the opening credits have even properly settled, you're in exceptionally good hands.
I'll be straight with you about the pacing, because it will absolutely divide people. This film meanders. It drifts through the Swiss mountain air with a contemplative, almost stubborn slowness that is going to test the patience of anyone expecting conventional forward momentum. There are stretches where Sorrentino seems perfectly content to simply sit and observe. For some viewers, that's going to feel indulgent. For me, it's precisely where the film earns its keep. That languid rhythm gives you room to breathe, to actually sit with these characters and absorb their quiet regrets, their fading memories, the things they've said and the things they've left unsaid for far too long.
The music is fantastic, and I don't mean that as a throwaway compliment. Sorrentino uses sound as a vital, beating heart of the whole thing, not background dressing, not mood wallpaper. It underscores the characters' internal lives with a haunting beauty that earns every second of screen time it takes up. For a film about a composer's complicated relationship with his own work, that musical texture had to land perfectly. It does.
What strikes me most, though, is the tonal balance Sorrentino manages to hold throughout. There's genuine melancholy here, the particular weight of men staring down their own mortality and reckoning with whether their life's work amounted to what they'd hoped. But it never tips into cheap sentimentality, and it occasionally catches you off guard with a flash of warmth or even dark humour that keeps it from becoming oppressive. The contrast between the restless energy of the younger guests at the resort and the slower, still-smouldering creative fire of the older men is handled with a delicate touch I wasn't fully expecting.
Caine, in particular, delivers something I'll remember for a long time. There's a stillness to his performance that communicates volumes. I've loved him across so many different kinds of film, from something as contained and morally complex as The Quiet American to far louder, more crowded pictures, but here he strips everything back and what remains is quietly devastating. Keitel matches him, and the scenes they share feel genuinely lived-in, like you're watching two people who have known each other for years rather than two actors doing their job.
Is it a perfect film? No. The deliberate pace will lose some people completely, and there are moments where the allegory leans a touch too heavily on itself. But the ambition is real, the craft is real, and the emotional honesty is real. This is exactly the kind of picture that gets more interesting in your memory the further you get from it.
Three and a half stars. A deeply human, beautifully observed meditation on ageing, art, and the things we choose to hold onto. Worth every slow, considered minute.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 2015 | Watched: 2026-07-28
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Studiocanal Presents Amazon Channel
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Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
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Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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