The Best of Youth

Yesterday I finished watching "The Best of Youth" a six-hour saga produced for Italian television. I recommend it highly. I learned of its existence about a year ago when I started seeing it on virtually all of the "top ten" lists, which is rare for a subtitled foreign film. I ordered the first disk from Netflix way back in June, but never had the time or inclination to sit down and watch it. Time and inclination finally crossed paths and I was able to see it at last. This has got to be one of those "trust me" reviews, because the story spans 37 years from 1966 to 2003, with oodles of rich, complex characters and deep dialog (even though conveyed by subtitle), which would take me pages and pages to cover. It's got everything: family, love, sex, radical politics, mafia assassinations, flawless film making, stunning location shots in Italy, Sicily, and Norway, and so on. Suffice it to say, when it was all over, I was sad to leave the characters and their milieu behind. Tom says five out of five stars. Check it out.