The film was originally developed for Italian television and I can only imagine how it must have played differently for people with an intimate knowledge of the history. If it can bring tears to the eyes of an American in his mid-twenties, how much more powerful must it be for an Italian in his sixties?
To call La Meglio gioventù an epic, as most do, is an attempt to reduce it to something manageable, when in reality it transcends the meaning of the word. For beyond the limits of the epic is filmmaking in the grandest sense. It is the territory of Kieslowski and Bergman and Fassbinder[1], men who created works bigger than a single film and subsequently changed the landscape of film itself. And while La Meglio gioventù is not quite at that level (only a select few are), it is perhaps as close anyone's gotten in the last ten years. Without question, it is the best film of 2005[2].
starring: Luigi Lo Cascio, Alessio Boni, Adriana Asti, Sonia Bergamasco, Maya Sansa, and Fabrizio Gifuni
written by: Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli
directed by: Marco Tullio Giordana
R, 366 min, 2003, Italy
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[1] Specifically I'm referring to Kieslowski's Dekalog (1989) and Trois couleurs (1994), Bergman's Scener ur ett äktenskap (1973), and Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980).
[2] It was released in Italy in 2003, played the festival circuit in 2004, and was released in New York on 2 March 2005. So while officially a 2003 film, I would consider it a 2005 film for such purposes.
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Article comments
1 - Triniman
I couldn't agree more and I raved about this film (Part 1, anyways) last year.
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/04/014948.php
Now that it's on DVD, it's my next purchase. I really hope people will discover what an outstanding film this is. It's one of those films that I will be mentioning to people as a "must-see" for years to come.
2 - Lucas McNelly
yeah, i've been hyping this to anyone who will listen. the runtime is a bit of a hard sell, though.
3 - wienboy
This was an extraordinary work. Question-- at the end of the movie, as Nicola and Mirella are walking down the path with their arms around one and another, at least on the DVD, a belt "magically" appears on Nicola. At first I thought it was some sort of editing mistake (as I'd noticed that he was not wearing a belt and then he was), but when I reviewed the scene again, it literally appears from nowhere. Any thoughts?