The Best? of Youth

The Oak Street Cinema is still open, folks. Although its health and the health of rep cinema is being questioned. You can read a great discussion about it in Citypages this week.

They are showing a film that opened a year ago at the Lagoon and didn't fare well box-office-wise, "The Best of Youth." Now, I would love to wholeheartedly send you all over to the Oak Street to see this six hour Italian epic. A.O. Scott from the New York Times loved it, named it one of the best films of the year. One of those two Entertainment Weekly reviewers also listed it in their year end top ten.

I can't endorse it completely, though. It is beautifully directed. Absolutely beautifully. It contains a twenty minute segment of film that is one of my favorites of the year. It's that other 5 hours and 40 minutes that pose the problem. Is it worth it? I would probably repeat the experience just to have those 20 minutes in my memory.

The film follows one Italian family through the past thirty years and they happen to be present Zelig-like at pretty much every significant event in modern Italian history. It felt episodic and reminded me of "The Sixties" and "The Seventies." Now, if Robert Altman had directed those, they might have looked better, but the script would still be the same thin, melodramatic tour of modern times.

I agree it is a fine film, but I also expected more with the hype.

I don't remember any 20 minute section standing out so much more than the rest of the film. But it's been a while since I saw it.

Which 20 minutes? Was the Florence flood 20 minutes?

Nope...the opening of the second half. The Christmas/New Year's scene that ends with a death.