I was unfamiliar with the work of Chinese director Feng Xiaogang before I saw Youth, which is now playing in its third week at the AMC River East. But based on this film—a handsome and sweeping period drama that looks at national history from the end of the Cultural Revolution to the mid-1990s—I can understand why Feng is sometimes called “China’s Spielberg.” Youth is formally impressive and heavy-handed: it’s clearly designed to be a crowd-pleaser. Like Steven Spielberg, Feng balances humanism and period spectacle in a seductive manner, immersing viewers in the historical setting while forging strong emotional bonds with the principal characters.
The final act of Youth follows the characters in the years after the war, observing them as they enter adulthood. These passages lack the seductive pull of the earlier scenes—they’re more intimate, considering the characters’ internal developments. The film still generates a certain amount of fascination as it transforms into a melodramatic love story about the growing relationship between Feng and Xiaoping, though I missed the imagination and historical sweep that defined the first half. Ultimately Youth is about how these individuals internalize the historical episodes they live through and emerge older and wiser for the wear.
