Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

La Meglio gioventù (The Best of Youth) is a six-hour miniseries made for Italian TV in 2003 by director Marco Tullio Giordana. With a limited theatrical release in 2005, this riveting masterpiece will most likely find its larger audience here in the USA back on the small screen when the DVD is released (February 2006). Considering its origin, that cannot be counted a cinematic tragedy, but if you have any chance whatsoever to catch it on the large screen, do so: this is filmmaking at its very best, and the cinematography alone will have you glued to every moment. Above and beyond its exquisite look, The Best of Youth carries an enormous emotional current in its epic sweep of nearly four decades spanning 1966 to roughly the present.

Like Gishiki (The Ceremony), Nagisa Oshima’s brilliant epic from 1971, The Best of Youth locates huge social changes in the small details, namely the evolution of a single large family. There are few films with such ambitions that get away with the family/society parallels so compellingly, and the success here has much to do with the creators’ refusal to allow anything or anyone to resemble a mere idea, faction, or school of thought. We are given a nest of characters with extraordinary depth and complexity, and the gorgeously bittersweet, complex story grows naturalistically and logically from their interactions, their own personal changes over the decades, and their existence within a gradually changing culture.

The film centers on the middle class, literate and bustling Carati Family. We are introduced midstream, as it were, to events and people— an affable father seeking help with any of his four children (two boys, two girls) in moving a large television set down the stairs. The seemingly mundane event exposes just as much about the characters involved (one, more serious son refuses to help on account of his upcoming exams, another blithely accepts, jumping at the excuse to procrastinate) as anything more traditionally “dramatic.” Indeed, in the six hours of the film, we do encounter a great number of large-scale events and spectacles (to be expected considering a 37 year time frame), ranging naturally from births to funerals, weddings to split-ups. But the glue of the film, the stuff that grants it all the more realness, pathos, and beauty, are the intimate scenes where virtually nothing of particular note happens: a brief exchange between strangers by the sea; a family playing board games on New Years Eve; old friends getting drunk and chatting away into the night.

There are two central characters, the brothers Matteo and Nicola, whom we follow most closely. One seems perpetually troubled, abandoning a promising academic career impulsively, and joining the army and then police force. He yearns for structure, but veers quickly out of control, losing his temper and shutting out those who get close to him. Nicola initially leaves school, becoming something of a hippy and moving to Norway where he works at a sawmill. The two meet again after the flood of Florence in 1966 draws both volunteers and the army to its rescue. Both brothers intervene earlier on the rescue a young woman from a barbaric asylum, and indeed her story becomes a central one as well, with Nicola becoming a psychiatrist whose mission is to revolutionize Italy’s mental institutions.

I realize that any attempt at a reasonable plot description will not only be laborious, but well-nigh impossible without doing injustice to the film’s most special trait of complexity and sensitivity. Recalling the bare facts of the events loses an enormous amount of critical and subtextual information, and drives home the amazing degree to which these actors (none of whom I’d known of before) and writers (Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli) have conjured something no less improbable and uncanny than life itself on the screen.

This is that rare epic that draws us in slowly and allows us to really get to know its characters over time. The lengthy time frame permits us to see the faults as well as unplanned good deeds an individual makes, and how over years these may amplify in unexpected directions. Not to spoil anything, but for example, the few words Matteo (in better spirits) shares with a stranger, a fledgling photographer he meets while in transit, wind up influencing her artistic outlook and career choices. Sometimes, it takes decades for things to resolve, for forgiveness, reconciliation and redemption to come around after a terrible breach.

The film is blessed with a fantastic soundtrack, both original (composer’s name not listed at IMBD) and stock, including music of J.S. Bach, Mozart, Fernando Sor, Astor Piazzolla, as well as popular songs contemporary to each time period. The make-up department does a pretty amazing job of aging some of the characters as much as 37 years, though in some cases suspension of disbelief must suffice. Did I mention the cinematography and locations? With gorgeous scenes in Turin, Rome, Ravenna, Palermo, and coastal Sicily, the film happens to be a mouthwatering tour of Italy, as well as of northern Norway.

Part One (the first three hours) encompasses the years 1966 to 1983, and sets the stage perfectly for the completely unexpected twists and turns of Part Two. I can hardly suppress my joy at having discovered this film, and wish to spread the wealth with as enthusiastic a recommendation possible for it. (If you look at my profile, where I rank the films I’ve seen of the last two year— over 70 of them— you will see it tops the list.) Future viewings, despite the lengthy playing time, are definitely in order, as this feels to me like a great work of art that grows in depth over time, and changes as you change.

In Samuel Beckett’s play, Krapp’s Last Tape, an aging man looks back on his younger selves (recording at various intervals on his birthday), and is horrified at what a fool he was. The schematic whereby any present self will be automatically ridiculed or dismissed by a future one leads to a vortex, a condition suggesting we are always fools, and it will only be a matter of time before we realize it this time. As an antidote to this absurdist or pessimistic view of human nature, we have The Best of Youth. Hardly a sentimental or gleefully optimistic bromide, the film similarly contains numerous instances where individuals recant or move on from their former positions (e.g. a reformed political terrorist). But instead of negating or refuting those earlier mistakes or foibles, they seem to move on with a blithe sense of bittersweetness and resolve: they have children, the children grow up and act more or less as they once did, small wisdom accrues, a general hope is placed in the young. It may seem unoriginal or pat to affirm that things come full circle, but there is strikingly nothing clichéd or fake about the story. It feels like life with its minor revelations and tragedies and small miracles, and quietly seizes you with its abundant humanism, good will, heartache, beauty and inexorable forward motion.

6 out of 5 stars

Recommended: Yes