Saturday, June 17, 2006

Dedicate 6 hours of your life to watch this film


I have just watched one of the greatest films ever made... 'The Best of Youth'
how do I describe it? Where do I begin...
poignant.. touching... funny.. sad.. mesmorizing... and surreal... absolutely brilliant...
simply beautiful...
and I laughed and I cried and cried...
(and everyone knows me as stone woman 'cause I simply don't cry in movies)


'La Meglio Gioventù, as director Marco Tullio Giordana calls his prizewinning narrative masterpiece, begins in Rome, in 1966, when the Carati boys — two of four children born into a middle-class family — are just launching their adult lives. Nicola wants to become a doctor (to which end a kindly professor urges the young man to move away because ''Italy is a dying, useless country''); Matteo has more longings — he's a passionate reader of books — and fewer plans. Nicola identifies with liberalism and enlightenment; Matteo becomes a soldier, then a cop. And as the lives and fortunes of the Carati clan wax and wane, expand and intertwine, their intimate struggles, joys, and accommodations reflect the rhythms of societal life on a larger scale: The 1966 Florence floods, Italy's 1982 World Cup championship, the terrorism of the Red Brigades, and the violence of Mafia murders share equal, gracefully apportioned weight with personal history. (The geography shifts too, from Rome to Florence to Turin to Palermo to the Tuscan countryside, with a magical stop in Norway.)
Like a great novel from a more expansive bygone age, The Best of Youth is full of big thoughts; like a great soap opera, it's also full of sharp plot turns, vibrant characters, and great talk. It is, in short, the best of cinema.'



To know more...
The Best of Youth


I know I will watch it again and again...

7 comments:

Shaykhspeara Sha'ira said...

Sounds like an amazing movie. Have you seen La Vita é bella? Benigni's masterpiece.

BuJ said...

Very interesting!
I saw this movie 3 yrs ago (when I started learning Italian) in Italian. It took me 2 days to watch it because the cinema decided to play it in two parts!

I saw it at the chapter.

Might be interesting info for you with your Arthouse project.

Cosmic girl said...

Shayspeara..
yes I have seen... 'Life is beautiful'... benigni did a great job..it was Funny and very effective...
on the other hand I think he's repeating it with 'The tiger and the snow' or 'La Tigre e la neve'...

Cosmic girl said...

hey Buj...
thanx for the link... I'll add it to my list...
unlike you.. I pulled off a marathon of six hours on my friday evening...
'learning itialian?' so u any good...
I think I should've learnt italian instead of french.. atleast they're friendlier...
and they come up with better movies...
another favorite of mine is none other than 'Cinema Paridiso'.. I can relate to it in soo many ways..but the list goes on with other good italian films as well..

BuJ said...

haha.. i am ok in italian.. although i am excellent in swear words (naturally.. brought up in dubai etc.. hehe)

italians are so nice.. i met an italian couple once (outside italy) with my other significantly better half and we had an amazing conversation with them! They are so friendly.. the guy was from Lecce and the wife from Palermo.. I swear the more south you go in Italy the more fun they become.. the less blonde.. and the more arab they are (in a good way)!

i've been told cinema paradiso is amazing.. but haven't seen it yet.. an irish friend of mine swears by it.. but he doesn't wanna give me the DVD to borrow.. uff.. tight!

anyway i gotta visit italy soon, before my schengen expires!!!

dhaheri said...

where is my copy...

I want to see it...I am off now days (m m m just 15 min back my leave started)
& I need to watch something

Cosmic girl said...

remind me when u come to dubai...
(if ever)