FINALLY AVAILABLE ON DVD
The Best of Youth
a k a La Meglio Gioventù
2003-Italy-Drama
N.Y. Times Review by A. O. Scott
* Critic's Pick
REVIEW SUMMARY
Orignally commissioned by Italian television as a miniseries, Marco Tullio Giordana's six-hour journey through recent Italian history is nothing less than a masterpiece, combining epic sweep with precise, heart-rending intimacy. At the center of its sprawling story of family and politics are two brothers, Matteo (Allessio Boni) and Nicola (Luigi lo Cascio), whose entwined and diverging fates become a microcosm of Italy's tumultrous transformation in the decades from 1966 to 2002. As rich with character and incident as a 19th-century novel, the film chronicles the radical politcs of the 1960's and 70's and glances at the political corruption of the years that follows, but its deep subject is the way the lives of ordinary citizens reflect and shape the life of a nation. While Nicola and Matteo journey to the extremes of ideological nihilism and encounter tragedy and frustration, their story is ultimately about the survival — indeed the triumph — of a humane, temperate world view, embodied in the thrift, decency and generosity of the middle class that bred them, and against which they both, in their youth, rebelled. — A. O. Scott, The New York Times
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