There is no youth, only the back

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" also has a story of rejuvenation, love, beauty and changing times. But unlike Benjamin Button's bizarre birth, Coppola's portrayal of Professor Dominic Mattei in the adaptation of Romanian theologian Iliad's novel of the same name "Youth Without Youth" is a real rejuvenation. This talented student who is obsessed with the origin of language and the concept of time has given up on youth and love because of lack of time and devoted himself to studying. He is over seventy and still unable to complete his research. He went to Bucharest, the capital of Romania, to prepare for this remnant of his life, but he was struck by lightning on the way to his death and was hospitalized for treatment. This blow doesn't matter, but it makes Dominic Mattai return to youth: new teeth, new body, and more importantly, mysterious superpowers. The rejuvenated Dominic has acquired the ability to learn languages ​​in his sleep. Not only that, he can know the content of a book when he flashes it in front of him, just like ten years in a day. He can also move his mind and make things happen. He believes that he is a "mutant" of human beings, a newcomer to the future world.

In addition to endless youth and time, the electric shock strikes another personality of Dominic, a colder, rational, and purposeful mirror image. The two Dominics often have conversations, such as:

"Dual personalities. Always ready to answer any question that comes to my mind, like a real guardian angel."
"Well, that's right and useful."
"Anything else?"
"What more."
"Like?"
"In addition to angels and guardian angels, there are also the ruling classes: archangels, seraphs, puzhi angels, transitional creatures that partially merge with us, transitions between consciousness and unconsciousness..."
"Well, Of course."
"And between nature and man, man and god, reason and emotion, yin and yang, dark and light, matter and spirit..."
"So back to the topic I was passionate about before, philosophy of religion?"
"Yes. For you, it's always going back there."

Dominic's mirror image tells him that nothing in the world is accidental. That is to say, it is precisely because Dominic is obsessed with finding the origin of language and the truth of time that he was "selected" to rejuvenate himself. A woman who looks exactly like Laura, his former fiancée, helps him get closer to the beginning of language in his sleep. In the process, the passage of time becomes an illusion for Dominic, but it is doubly shown to Villanica, making her age rapidly. At this time, Dominic was faced with the choice between knowledge and love again, either sacrificing love to seek knowledge, or giving up knowledge and saving the memory of love-is this like "Faust"?

But "Youth Without Youth" is not obsessed with studying the history of human evolution, it is about the future. In 1968, Dominic, who was nearly 100 years old but rejuvenated with his mirror image, returned to his hometown, Piatra-Neamc, Romania. The mirror image of reason reproaches Dominic's id sensibility, saying that because of this he failed to complete even a single book and was a complete failure. Dominic's id tried to denounce the purposiveness of the mirror with the destructive power of nuclear weapons on human beings, and broke the mirror to destroy his "guardian angel".

Such an arrangement clearly denies man's future, or all means of life that aim at a vision. Inevitably, the center of the meaning of life returns to the process itself, so Dominic returns to Café Select in 1938, the beginning of the film. What exactly did Dominic go through between 1938 and 1968?


Between reality and the future, is the dream.

Dominic cites Zhuangzi's dream of butterflies twice to emphasize the mutual transformation between dreams and reality, and this is where the illusion of time lies. In fact, further, what is a person? Is it a physical composition or the sum of memories? If people can preserve memory, does it mean eternal youth? If memory is one's true self, what about dreams? Everything we experience in the dream state: shapes, scenes, colors, smells, everything that comes to life, is inseparable from the rest of the memory in the time after waking. Who can say that dreams are fake and life is real?

One of the most mysterious details in the film is the young Dominic in 1968 Café Select explaining to an old friend in 1938 that he is from the future, then suddenly aging, memory loss, and finally dying in his hometown in 1968. In this clip, Dominica, who got rid of the mirror image, still knows the authenticity of World War II, the atomic bomb, and the hydrogen bomb, just as Villanica can see the mirrored entity of Dominica. "Reality" is a relative concept. The same goes for Dominica's rejuvenation and the cycle of time, both real and a distorted illusion that conceals a deeper truth - the film begins with the wave-like mechanical details of the pocket watch and the reversed hands that have made the film throughout the film. Summarize. Life and death, solid and liquid, time and eternity - Dalí, a Spanish surrealist painter, in his 1931 painting "The Eternity of Memory" accurately conveyed the fluid form of the subconscious which is based on consciousness but beyond consciousness.

So, through "Youth Without Youth", what does Coppola, who incarnates Dominic Mattei, want to express?

I believe that it is not the origin of language, nor is it just a footnote to the true form of human existence that shatters the passage of time. So, what do we get from Coppola in this mysterious, fantastical, incredible story of light and shadow displacement?

Roses, of course those three roses.

Two for life and one for death. Then turned away. Youth is over, time will come to an end, only the last back when leaving can finally cross nature and people, people and gods, reason and emotion, yin and yang, darkness and light, matter and spirit, time and space, everything can be said in invisible.

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