Got a spare six hours? Well, it would be a shame if you didn't, because this sweeping Italian drama is worth every minute.
Comment
03/25/05
The Best of Youth (2005)
95
%
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work 
Reviews Counted:60
Fresh:57
Rotten:3
Average Rating:8.3/10
Consensus: Earns its 6 hours running time by telling an engrossing story with compelling characters.
Runtime: 6 hrs 40 mins
Genre: Foreign Films
US Box Office: $0
Synopsis: Spanning four decades, from the chaotic 1960s to the present, director Marco Tullio Giordana’s passionate epic THE BEST OF YOUTH follows two Italian brothers through some of the most tumultuous... [More]
Starring: Luigi Lo Cascio, Alessio Boni, Adriana Asti, Sonia Bergamasco
Director: Marco Tullio Giordana
Reviews for The Best of Youth
The story this six-hour film from Italy tells is full of nuance and complexity, but it is also as accessible and engrossing as a grand 19th-century novel.
12/08/03
Top CriticThis six-hour Italian drama spans nearly 40 years in the life of one family, and in doing so, channels half a century in the life of a nation.
10/08/03
Works in the engrossing fashion of a good pulpy novel ... using whiskery melodramatic staples to digress into a whole slew of differing scenarios and moods.
03/02/06
The Best of Youth runs, though never dawdles, for an easy six hours, with barely a false note.
04/20/05
Top CriticTraces the quiet failures and proud struggles of everyday lives caught up like driftwood in the currents of history . . . conjures up an exultant, slice-of-life authenticity.
09/15/05
a story that's less like fiction and more like the way that families (and countries) actually age.
02/07/06
Best of Youth has the textures and depth of characterization of a great novel.
06/09/05
This is the sort of movie you'll recommend to friends and they'll go, 'Six hours! Are you nuts?' and then call you up and thank you in the middle of the night.
03/03/05
Extraordinarily ambitious and effacingly accomplished, this is both an affecting domestic drama and a provocative political epic that is never anything less than intimate, intelligent and involving.
07/03/04
Top CriticNot to be missed by anyone who cares about the joys, sorrows, and challenges of living in the modern world.
03/03/05
It avoids the pratfalls of easy melodrama by maintaining a psychological distance from its characters; there are never any obvious explanations for their choices or behaviors.
03/22/05
This epic elegy to family and country is a towering work of narrative fiction.
02/05/06
Its themes are for everybody, though this wonderful drama must surely hold a special relevance for the graying boomers who went through those wild years.
03/17/05
The result is that valued rarity, an intimate epic.
03/03/05
Among the least cynical and most humanistic features of recent times.
05/29/04
An astonishing, deeply engrossing Italian family saga that happens to be six hours long.
06/23/06
After all the observations on heartache, politics, art, commerce, passion, identity, mortality, even mental health, six hours begin to seem downright compact.
03/04/05
The Best of Youth is no masterpiece, but it has enough truthful, moving moments to make it worthwhile.
03/16/06
The movie has the addictive episodic intimacy of great TV.
03/03/05
Latest News for The Best of Youth
April 05, 2006:
Breaking News: Movies Not Screened For Critics Aren't Very Good
After some furious debate over David Germain's discussion of films "not screened for critics," RT takes a look at the Tomatometers and respective B.O. performances of... More...
December 13, 2005:
Awards Season Gets Rolling with Crix Picks
If you're a fan of the late-year awards season, be sure to add Movie City News to your hit list, because they deliver some consistently excellent coverage. Mid-December is when... More...
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