The Best of Youth is a six-hour, two-part Italian movie tracking the lives an Italian family from the sixties until the turn of the new century.
The movie focuses on the two brothers Matteo and Nicola’s very different but intertwined lives. From the sixties where Nicola travels to Norway while Matteo joins the army to Nicola’s work as a campaigning psychiatrist to Matteo’s work as a police detective and crime-scene photographer.
It is a huge movie centred around key events in Italian history, coming full circle as Matteo’s son travels to Norway as Nicola did. ‘Everything is beautiful.’ Tragedy or comedy - everything is beautiful, if you look carefully enough.
But while the movie includes many major events in Italian history like the Florence floods and the assassination of Judge Falcone, it is really about the people: or as Matteo says at one point: ‘In a photograph you have to capture the person underneath’.
And that is what I spent much of the movie thinking about. Who are they really? What do they really think?
Here are just a handful of the many questions the movie left me with:
What is going on in Julia’s head as she leaves Nicola and her daughter to join the Red Brigade?
Does the mother know that Matteo is gay? Do any of them? Does Matteo?
Is Georgia really mad or is she hiding from her horrific life?
The movie has so many questions left unanswered or partially answered or hinted at. Days after I found myself wondering about them. What was the real answer?
The Best of Youth is not my typical movie. I normally prefer more speculative elements. But this tale of a family through its crises is gripping and sad.
You will find yourself wondering about it days after watching.
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