The Best Of Youth
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Movie Reviews of The Best Of Youth
Movie Review: A MOVIE ABOUT LIFE ! ! !
Summary: 5 Stars
I guess that's the easiest way I could sum this movie up: It's a movie about life. Sounds a bit plain, doesn't it?
The Best of Youth, though, is anything but plain and boring. It tells the story of a family in Italy from the 1960's all the way into the year 2000. As you can imagine, alot happens in 40 years: floods, riots, people die, are born, part ways, meet new friends and so forth.
But what really drew me into this 6 hour masterpiece were the characters. There are no heroes, there are no anti-heroes--just people, like you and me. The story of Matteo and Nicola could be any one of us.
Speaking of characters, I haven't been this attached to the characters since I last watched an episode of Friends. The actors don't play their parts, they ARE their parts. If I saw the actor who played Matteo on the streets of Italy, I would be like, "Hey, it's Matteo!" The acting was THAT good. You'll go through a full spectrum of emotions with them throughout the course of this film.
As for the pace of the movie, it takes a while to get to know the characters, the setting, but after about an hour you'll feel comfortable with it all. The plot twists are scattered and generously spaced, making them happen at just the right moment without feeling forced. I have to admit that some of the plot twists may not be anything new or innovative (alot of the plot twists you could see on any given day on a Soap Opera), but the whole of the movie is so well done you won't be able to care less. There are so many powerful and moving scenes in this movie--I'd love to tell them to you, but then I'd ruin your experience, wouldn't I?
I can tell you one I liked, though:
There is a scene in this movie where one of the characters says, "I don't believe in exclamation points." Let me tell you, this is a GREAT movie, and I do believe in exclamation points!!!
Movie Review: The Best Six Hours
Summary: 5 Stars
I saw a review for The Best of Youth over a year ago when it was in theaters (and I was nowhere near a theater where it was playing). I copied the review onto a document and saved it on the desktop of my computer as a reminder to keep checking for its release. I was so excited in November when the release was announced, and even though I got the movie on a Thursday night, I popped it in to see how much I could watch before I dropped.
The movie takes you in immediately, and covers a lot of ground it its 6 hours. That isn't to say that it moves at a brisk pace. The film explores the relationships between its characters fully, exposing the passion and pathos that make life rich. Could someone have edited it down to less? Probably, but we are talking about a film made by people for whom lunch is a 2-hour event and "il dolce far niente" is an acceptable pastime, so some of the downtime and details (like one girl's youthful foray into fencing) we just take and weave into this full portrait of the lives presented.
The opening credits feature photographs that I can't help thinking must be as familiar to an Italian audience as the picture of Dewey holding the "DEWEY WINS" newspaper is to an American viewer. For me, the systematic depiction of historic and cultural events that have rocked Italy since the 1960s, as seen through the viewpoints of the two very different main characters (one as the "everyman" and liberal voice, the other as the government and law) made the film, which would have been good anyway, particularly valuable and insightful. We get to glimpse Italy as it sees itself.
And the beautiful thing is that in spite of the turmoil of the past 35 years, this Italy sees healing, hope, and promise in its future.
Movie Review: Amazingly Great Italian Film
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the greatest film to come out of Italy in many years. Originally made as a miniseries for RAI TV, but you'd never know it. Works beautifully on big screen or small. Astonishingly good script, terrific acting by the four leads (Boni, Lo Cascio, Trinca, and Asti), and very nice (but not groundbreaking) directing.
'Best of Youth' is a profound political allegory in the guise of a very absorbing and deeply moving soap opera. Story follows the two Carati brothers, Nicola and Matteo, through the turbulent decades from 1966 to 2003, during which they and their friends and family experience many of the most explosive moments in Italy's recent history--the flooding of Florence, the student riots, the FIAT layoffs, the mafia wars and Red Brigade terrorism of the 80s, the restructuring of the economy, etc.--all without ever seeming too contrived. The characters of the two brothers are individualized, complex, and perfectly credible.
The first time you watch this movie, you get caught up in its very touching story full of people you come to care about very much, as if they were members of your own family. The second and third times you start to notice all sorts of parallels with modern Italian political history supported by lots and lots of subtle symbolism and carefully developed themes. From the song that plays over the opening credits to the last shot of the entire movie, everything fits together like a precision watch that keeps perfect time. The more I see this movie, the more impressed I am with it. Here it is months later and I'm still thinking about it. I don't say this very often about a movie, but...this one is AMAZING.
Movie Review: Where life is beautiful . . .
Summary: 5 Stars
This six-hour made-for-TV movie is a drama about a middle class Italian family that covers over 35 years of modern Italian history. Its central characters are two brothers of different temperaments, whose lives take very different paths. The overall message of the film, that life is beautiful, is played out against beautifully photographed travelogue footage that ranges from Turin to Palermo, with side trips to Norway, and a cast of often strikingly photogenic performers. More important, the film's dramatic conflicts, which hold our interest over the length of six hours, include a political dimension as one of the many characters becomes involved in a radical leftist cell, whose mission is to target and assassinate members of the professional and academic elite. The film has been praised for its refusal to simply sensationalize its subject but to humanize all those affected (would-be assassin, potential victim, and police inspector) and represent them with some psychological truth rather than stereotyping them.
During the course of the film, a new generation emerges to soften the harsher legacy of recent history and to demonstrate that if life is beautiful it is in its returning promise that the failures of the past need not discourage our hopes for the future. While all of the cast bring to life characters that are plausibly real, the performance of Alessio Boni as the darkly tormented brother Matteo is a standout. The music score ranges from pop music and jazz of the 1960s to haunting compositions by Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla. It's been a long while since we've seen really great cinema from Italy. May this be the beginning of a new wave.
Movie Review: Truly spectacular, moving, humane
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Best of Youth" is a six-hour mini-series that follows the fortunes of an Italian family from the 1960s almost to the present. It is an amazing experience for the viewer. It's like a cinematographic version of "War and Peace" with a lovely, slow, thoughtful and ultimately moving love story at its heart.
The movie is based around the experiences of two brothers who go through a seminal experience together when they are young students and react in very different ways. One joins the army and then the police; the other becomes a child psychiatrist. We also meet their friends, an economist and a builder.
As the lens widens, we are drawn into a loving family circle. Every character is so precisely etched we feel we know them -- the speculator father, teacher mother, two sisters...I have to add here that the acting is uniformly superb. The music that accompanies the action is also brilliant and of course the photography and depiction of Italy are stunning.
I'm not Italian so some of the events they live through don't have the same resonance for me -- the threat of the Red Brigades who engaged in urban terrorism for example.
Here is a group of people who live through tragedy and yet survive. I was tremendously struck by the general attitude of the movie -- compassionate, understanding and yet it takes a clear moral stance. These aren't heroes -- just ordinary people doing their best. Not all of them succeed -- there are some tragic failures here -- but most perservere, working through the bad times to celebrate the good.
This is a wonderful, wonderful movie. You'll laugh, you'll cry. See it!