THE BEST OF YOUTH (2003)

 (Now for one of my irregular epic-watch days, specifically here on July 4th)

A good example of creating your own (unintentional) 4DX experience at home: when Matteo is at his home on New Years Eve and the fireworks are going off, since this is July 4th I am viewing this it happened to be that all the outside neighbors set off their fireworks at the same time. It threw me off and then some to have so much of that going off right outside my windows.

...... anyway......

Usually, when a film - and yes this started life as a mini-series and eventually aired as that but we are in that muddy line between show and film ala Twin Peaks or Fanny and Alexander, so let's just call it a film for now - is as long as this, or even if it is more like three or four hours, there may be (fair or not) an expectation that the filmmakers and cast will deliver somwthing more profound. Call it the DF Wallace Infinite Jest Thing, but there is almost something where your eyes get big and you think "whoa, there must be something capital G Great about this." And for much of The Best of Youth, it is a special story precisely because it is more of an "intimate" epic of a kind.

This means Best of Youth is not going to, or at least means to, hook the audience in by where it is shot or by large crowd scenes or violence or other spectacular feats - even as Best of Youth does feature some impressive vistas not just in Italy and its many coastlines and the coliseum at one point and vast buildings, but in Norway, too (where Nicola goes on a "I need time to find myself" stretch as a young man) - rather it will be through conversations and characters watching one another and often a person sitting alone with their thoughts and that leading to something big and dramatic.

This is a story of two brothers and how an experience when they were young men, chiefly meeting Electro-Shocked almost-orphan Giorgia (Trinca in one of those delicately calibrated performances that has to be interesting or else it could be full of tics, and it never is because she expresses so much in her eyes - she is so good by the way she, not the brothers, got the lion's share of the marketing despite being a supporting player), doesn't define them but does inspire them in a way towards what they will do professionally in their lives, in psychiatry and in the military/the police, because there are others like Giorgia needing care and protection.

 Of course the brothers are different in temperaments, the story wouldn't be very good if they were the same, and one of the things that kept me captivated was how the qualities each of them has develops and is revealed through the people they meet - Nikola as someone who wants or perhaps needs to fix things or to make things right and eventually, as with the mother of his child (not quite wife) Giulia, finds he cannot always do that, and Matteo who's steadfastness and discipline does not mean his anger and emotional problems are easy to escape.k

It is much more slice-of-life than you might be ready for, so... now you are. But that is also welcome when the actors and, for the most part, the script are so attuned to keeping the drama more natural and so when things to reach a head and a person leaves another or one brother finds a new connection that could lead to love or, most crucially, what Giorgia means to Nicola and Matteo when she reenters the story, we believe it and are moved by it.

 There are shocking turns, but the filmmakers also give those moments time to unfurl and feel deep for us because of all the time we have had with them. Life is full of tragedies but what makes something special is not that something bad happened but how to keep one's humanity when it does. The Best of Youth takes its time and earns our absorption into what goes on, even with the wayward mother Giulia character and her separation from the family (though by the last hour that thread starts to strain, a little).

If I am hesitant to pull out the M/Masterpiece crown for the head of this behemoth it is that in the final part of this the story does take a couple of turns that are not bad or negative exactly but feel more out of a story that I didnt think this was, as in having a "whoa" twist/reveal for us. It is not something bad for the characters, on the contrary it is something that brings a lot of unexpected joy to fill a chasm of grief never filled, but it is a turn that raises a question as to why this person never sought out the rest of the family with this not insignificant news.

 That last hour is also largely about tidying things up thematically and by the end the next generation is on their way for their own discoveries and lives and loves, and there is one beat (the one not unexpected death in the story) that made me unintentionally laugh due to how the scene unfolds. This is all to say that for as tremendous as much of this film is, it ran out of dramatic steam for me.

Still, if you love Italian cinema, or just stories involving siblings and meaty drama around mental illness, anger issues, parents and their children, and how thorny and lovely romance can be, director Tullio Giordana and his capable cast present details and moments and places with an emotional truth that makes things feel vivid and like life is just unfolding before our eyes more than a set story with a larger goal in mind (there may be a deeper thematic goal by the end met, though it is more like "people have to discover who they are and find some peace with that, or they might not, but trying is important").   In other words, a very very good film that is like a truly majestic and profound 5 hour film inside a 6 hour package.