The Best of Youth Review

It was made as a Rai miniseries, shelved amid a political row, and rescued by the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes in 2003, after which Italy released it in cinemas in two parts. The story starts in the summer of 1966, when Nicola and Matteo Carati try to spring Giorgia, a young patient scarred by electroshock, from an asylum and take her north with them. The rescue fails, and the brothers spend the next thirty-seven years on diverging roads: Nicola becomes a psychiatrist fighting to reform the asylums, Matteo drifts into the army and then the police.

Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli let history arrive sideways. The brothers reunite in Florence after the Arno flood, where Nicola meets Giulia, who will later vanish into the Red Brigades, and every public upheaval lands as a private one. Luigi Lo Cascio's patience and Alessio Boni's coiled fury make a superb pair of brothers, and Adriana Asti and Jasmine Trinca are nearly as good. Roberto Forza's camerawork is television plain, which is the one real limit.

Roger Ebert wrote that no good movie is too long and called this one a novel. At six hours it is the rare epic that feels short.