They wanted to change the world.
The Best of Youth is a six-hour-long Italian Epic Movie that crosses from the 1960s to the 2000s. It is about the Roman Carati family, more specifically on the two brothers Nicola and Matteo. The movie starts in summer 1966 right when Nicola and Matteo are about to attend exams at their university (the former studies medicine while the latter literature). For his part-time job, Matteo is asked to keep company to Giorgia, a girl hospitalized in a local psychiatric clinic where she has been treated with elettroshock. The decision to make her escape that place and take her to her family completely changes the brothers' plans for summer holidays, as they intended to go to Norway with some friends. They don't know it already, but this is going to set the start for a long series of events that will accompany them in the following years.Mixing both drama and a Generational Saga, with a vast Ensemble Cast, a compelling and emotional story focused on the Caratis chronicles dealing with Italian's social, political and generational transformations from the late 60s to the 2000s, The Best of Youth received wide acclaim both critics and audience-wise and was awarded under the section Un Certain Regard at the 56th edition of Cannes Film Festival in 2003.
This film provides examples of:
- The '60s: The movie opens on summer 1966.
- The '70s
- The '80s
- The '90s
- Arc Words: Tutto è bello.note
- Armor-Piercing Question: See Calling the Old Woman Out below.
Sara: [to Giulia] You all wanted to put everything to fire and sword and now you need to ask for permission to play?
- Beehive Hairdo: It can be seen in the 60s, of course.
- Calling the Old Woman Out: Well, as a young adult Sara surely is rather disappointed by Giulia's refusal to play something at the organ for her, just something, especially after hearing her mother's poor and lazy excuses not to do so. This makes Giulia realize her mistake and luckly she plays for her daughter shortly after.
- Camera Fiend: Mirella before becoming an actual photographer.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Nicola and Carlo have another friend who goes on the trip with them after college, and Nicola has two True Companions (outside his regular family) at the end of the movie, one of which is Carlo. There is never any mention of the other friend who accompanied Nicola and Carlo.
- Color Motif: Blue. Some of the outfits worn bu the characters in pivotal moments are in different shades of blue. Blue is predominant in various shots and scenes. Also, the blue balloon Sara lets fly away not much time after her mother left. Plus, the movie's poster.
- Cool Aunt: Francesca is this to Sara.
- The Cutie: Both Francesca and Sara as little girls. Their tenderness would just melt anyone's heart.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Giorgia.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Angelo thinking homosexuality to be some mental illness, in the 70s. Nicola promptly denies it.
- Ensemble Cast: See Epic Movie below.
- Epic Movie: With its over six-hour runtime, a huge Ensemble Cast and a plot covering over thirty years folding through an impressive Generational Saga mixed with Italian history from the second half of 20th century, this movie certainly qualifies as an epic, although it falls more under the same cathegory of such intimate epic movies as Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day, focusing not so much on visual spectacle but more on the vastness of its scope and emotional scale.
- Establishing Character Moment: The first scene, where Matteo and Nicola's father asks them for help moving a television set. Matteo refuses, on the basis that he's swamped with homework, but Nicola immediately agrees, saying he needs a break. This moment makes both characters' personalities very clear.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: Happens to Giulia. The first one after she left Nicola and Sara and her political struggle got a darker turn. The second one after she's released by prison and starts a new life.
- Father, I Want to Marry My Brother: Francesca when she was just a child.
- Friend to All Children: Nicola.
- Generation Xerox: Matteo's son looks just like him, but is clearly played by a different actor.
- Generational Saga: See Epic Movie above.
- Hate Sink: The lady working at the psychiatric hospital that Nicola inspects and where he finds Giorgia shortly after. Not only she clearly lies to Nicola and his team about the patients, but keeps lying even when the atrocious condition of those poor people hidden in the basement are about to be revealed, shamelessly yelling at Nicola and saying they're not treating her with the respect owned to a human being.
- Important Haircut: Happens to Matteo after he entered military school. Nicola on the other hand has an important hairgrowth during his time in Norway, and he shaves again later in the movie (thus fitting the trope, albeit only facial hair-wise).
- Intermission: It depends. If you pick a two-parter watching, you'll only get one intermission, three in the case you pick the four-part watching.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: You can tell Nicola, an upright and jolly doctor, is going through something as you see him smoking a Cigarette of Anxiety even though he isn't even a smoker (this is also pointed out). That's the only scene where it happens.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Adriana outlives Matteo.
- Platonic Prostitution: Happens to Matteo in a scene with an hooker in his car.
-
Retroactive Recognition: A young Riccardo Scamarcio plays Andrea after the timeskip to the 2000s. - Slogan-Yelling Megaphone Guy:
Giulia: Via via la polizia! Via via la polizia! note
- Spaghetti and Gondolas: Quite Downplayed compared to other movies and properties, but surely this movie might inspire you to visit some of Italy's art cities, not forgetting its islands.
- Turn of the Millennium: Where the movie ends.
- Unkempt Beauty: Both Nicola and Matteo in the 60s, as two young men of that period and being influenced (albeit differently) by those years' fashion and ideology. The contrast between the two is rather poignant when they meet in Florence after the Arno flood in 1966: Matteo is now a short-haired and cleanly shaved faced militar while Nicola has embraced the 60s new ideologies during his period in Norway and after the encounters he made. He also grew his beard, although he'll get rid of it later in the movie.
- Waving Signs Around: Giulia does this as the leader of a mass public protest in 1968, as we see her and Nicola taking part to the Sessantotto.
