The Best of Youth (2005)
Runtime: 6 hrs 40 mins
Genre: Foreign Films
Starring: Luigi Lo Cascio, Alessio Boni, Adriana Asti, Sonia Bergamasco, Maya Sansa
Screenwriter: Stefano Rulli, Sandro Petraglia
Producer: Angelo Barbagallo
DVD Info
Release:
Feb 7, 2006
Buy It On DVD
Reviews
You weep, laugh, celebrate and mourn with the characters throughout the six hours, which at once seem like an eternity and an instant.
An astonishing, deeply engrossing Italian family saga that happens to be six hours long.
The Best of Youth is no masterpiece, but it has enough truthful, moving moments to make it worthwhile.
Works in the engrossing fashion of a good pulpy novel ... using whiskery melodramatic staples to digress into a whole slew of differing scenarios and moods.
a story that's less like fiction and more like the way that families (and countries) actually age.
This epic elegy to family and country is a towering work of narrative fiction.
With the six-hour running time, Giordana gets the space to let the characters live and let their shared story unfold like a good novel.
Traces the quiet failures and proud struggles of everyday lives caught up like driftwood in the currents of history . . . conjures up an exultant, slice-of-life authenticity.
By the end, we know these characters so well that just seeing any two of them meet draws tears
It maintains a defiant optimism that the actions of individuals matter.
Unfolds like a novel full of characters we can't help but care about.
When the movie concludes, you can talk about these characters as if you actually know them -- which won't be far from the truth.
Few films have ever made better use of combining social and political history with romantic melodrama and suspense.
Best of Youth has the textures and depth of characterization of a great novel.
Its point is this: That every nation, like a family, is made up of many people who are often at odds with one another, but that ultimately, we are all one.
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