"Everything is beautiful."
Sometimes it may be hard to watch a six-hour film with subtitles and call it "short" but not only can I call it that, but I will say that it went by with satisfactory speed. Family sagas have always interested me. I even liked Danielle Steel's Jewels. (I know, I know, real men aren't supposed to like Danielle Steele.) But there's something about them I like. It's always good to move through different periods of history from the perspective of those affected, as opposed to those causing. But even in some of the more mediocre family sagas like Jewels there's sometimes an element there missing. It's a melodrama, but it's not emotional. The Best of Youth is different. Through the six hours, I laughed a few times, but I cried a few times as well. (I might be getting softer as I come towards the end of puberty. I thought this shit was supposed to happen with old women going through menopause but hey?)
The Best of Youth chronicles the lives of two brothers but like the splitting and intersecting branches of a tree, different characters include their own individual tales as well. The story begins with the main characters, Matteo and Nicola finishing High School and preparing for college. The plot details are quite thin now that I think about it. I won't go into them. It's really the characters that make the story. The character that especially got to me was Giorgia, a young girl he finds from an abusive mental ward.
As far as production qualities go, I guess the sets are good, but they don't really "wow" you. The reason they don't "wow" you though is that you really don't pay attention to them like let's say you would to the set decoration of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. But easily Benjamin Button is a inferior film. (I still struggle to see why we should even care about Button. So he ages backwards, big deal. They really missed some big opportunities there. Even reading the interviews it's like Fincher and Roth themselves have no idea what they're doing either.) Those films pretty much go out of the way to make us pay attention to the sets.
It may be that the cinematography, though complementing in it's own right, doesn't give us the opportunity to. All that said, it doesn't take away from the film at all. In fact, if they had produced it with the same gusto and flair of let's say, a Doctor Zhivago, a Ben-Hur, a Benjamin Button, or an Australia (this film has got some of the most gorgeous shots I've ever seen. It actually rivals what Christopher Doyle does with the camera and I consider him to be the best.) In fact, if it had been done that way I might have actually disliked the film. Instead, with a simplified shooting style, and realistic but not pompous set design, it feels more like a real and contemporary film. I'm not constantly reminded that this is a historical tale, though it is. We do indeed move and sway through forty years of Italian culture and counterculture but we do so while living in the moments as if they happened yesterday. It becomes an actual drama, and not a textbook. (The opposite can be just as satisfying too, but this works here.)
The music relies on a soundtrack for the most part. A little American, some more Italian. I love that, because Italian music is so great. I can still hear the main characters singing, Anatomia..! in my head. The music adds to the surrounding but it doesn't define the setting like let's say, a Tarantino soundtrack would. The story is pretty much wrapped around subtle production, and plot points but it all pretty much works because of the drama itself. It's a feat in itself to be able to watch tragedy and not find the experience full of cynicism or pessimism. Tragedy is instead something that the Greeks understood religiously: beautiful. But it's not melodramatic. Melodrama is soap opera. It's Gone with the Wind. Characters can't just die but they must be killed in horse accidents, have a miscarriage after being thrown down a flight of stairs, and so forth. Everything is just a little over the top.
Instead, The Best of Youth, is a quaint and little film of family, and friendship. Characters will come and go, audiences will weep and laugh, but it's not dramatic. The effect is more fulfilling because there is room for empathy. I can imagine myselves living in most of the characters' lives because the story does not aim for flair. It's a genuine sweep of one family. Sometimes it's good to just watch a film without being reminded that you're watching one. It's not pretentious and it's not ambitious. It just is, and everything is beautiful.
I leave you with a little Italian music. Few songs can bring you to tears. I haven't literally been brought to tears by a song but I've come close. (A few off the top of my head? True Love Waits by Radiohead, and A Change is Gonna Come by Sam Cooke. Here's another one...)
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